


Mind the Gap

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Category: Cricket RPF, Football RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: A.C. Milan, AFC Ajax, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Chefs, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Amsterdam, Aston Villa, Bayern München, Busking, Charlie Hebdo, Chefs, Coming Out, Continental Europe, Cooking, County Cricket Clubs, Cricket, Current Events, Elsinore, English Premier League, Eredivisie, Eurostar, F/M, FC Barcelona, Feyenoord, Football | Soccer, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Gen, HM Diplomatic Service, Hertha BSC, Inter Milan, Juventus Turin, La Liga, Leeds United, Liege Standard, Ligue 1 - Freeform, Lille OSC, M/M, NATO, Paris St-Germain FC (PSG), Pegida, Real Madrid CF, References to Hamlet, Religion, Religious Conflict, Secret Intelligence Service | MI6, Serie A - Freeform, Test cricket, Warwickshire, West Brom, Wolves, gap year, music industry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-09 05:02:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 63,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3237287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A prompted AU, in which aspiring teacher-trainee Zayn and football prospect Louis are going on a sort of abbreviated gap year. And encounter, after six years, Liam, who isn’t the little harrier he was: not by a longish chalk. He’s a top-order batsman for Warwickshire CCC, and tipped for an England call-up. And he has an idea of how to make the gap year road-trip meaningful.</p><p>After the three find themselves travelling with a curly-haired, banana-obsessed chef and an Irish singer-songwriter who hates publicity and touring, the Continent shan’t know what hit it.</p><p>Good thing HM Government are keeping a kindly eye on them, really, for reasons which shall emerge....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging

* * *

* * *

_Layne has been very kind towards some of my dabblings in this fandom; and I chanced to see[this repost on her Tumblr](http://laynefaire.tumblr.com/post/107076137775/ziamthekings-yo-whos-that-damn), to which she had noted that she was in want of seeing something of the sort written. This is at best something of the sort, inspired more by the snaps than by the tags which accompanied them: not least because I have inevitably made it rather British than American (gap years and petrol-station forecourts and all), and also because I am incapable of conceiving or crediting the original ‘onlie begetter’s’ Narry suggestion, let alone of writing it. All the same, I hope this brief amusement, the first portion of which was dashed off upon my return from a Viennese New Year (the second, alas, was written after the late events in Paris. I cannot claim the late acquaintance of Charb, Cabu, Oncle Bernard, et Cie, but I have at least one very dear friend in Fleet Street who was their old friend), brings pleasure, to Layne and to the many others who have been so very kind to my footling efforts._

_I trust it shall be remembered by readers, if any there be, that, in an AU, certain inessential details may be and often must be altered without making material changes to character. Additionally, all views are to be attributed to the characters, not the author. Well: bar the cricket bits._

_Oh: for those who don’t speak Yam-Yam. ‘Bay’ is the Midlands, and specially the Black Country, for ‘bain’t’, ‘be [am] not’, negation. ‘Ah bay goon’ is a declaration that one does not intend to go._

* * *

There’s _Humour,_ which for _chearful_ Friends we got,  
And for the thinking Party, there’s a _Plot_.  
We’ve something, too, to gratify _Ill-Nature_  
(If there be any here,) and that is _Satire;_  
Tho’ _Satire_ scarce dares grin, ’tis grown so _mild,_  
Or only shews its teeth as if it smiled.  
– Congreve and Wycherley

* * *

The Headmaster – quite a veteran now, he thought with a smile, after two years in post, his first at an independent school – looked out from his study window with a faint smile. Soon the bell should ring, the old jangling bell which only the soft airs of Trinity term could transmute from discord into sweetness. And it _was_ Trinity term, as witness the white figures just leaving the pitch, circling the Master i/c Cricket like porpoises ’round a three-masted barque, each sequacious of approval and confidence and praise from a man repeatedly capped for England in his day – and having captained England in triumphant Ashes and hard-won if lesser Tests. One certainly, mused the Headmaster, mustn’t miss the opportunity of greeting the Junior XI and the Master in charge. And, after all, with the ringing of the imminent and summoning bell, there should be other pupils released upon an unsuspecting school, and other Masters and distinguished adjuncts: pouring – not a few, no doubt, of both sexes, dusted with flour and redolent of vanilla and banana and sugar – from Mercia Buildings; rioting free of Darby Block; skylarking from Pensnett House; flocking, led by the footballers of the school eager for training and disdainful (or fronting it) of Summertide cricket, from Prince Rupert, clamorous for the attentions of the ex-Premier Leaguer who consented to stop weekly to advise them; thundering forth from Lady Wulfruna’s, their ears ringing with music and most of the girls and a few of the boys swooning over the eminent guest who dropped in now and again to give the actual Music Master a hand (and to eat all the tuck in Mercia, although his wife fed him perfectly well); coursing ’round the massy bulk of Somery in full cry....

Hinksford School, after all, was a new departure, if not precisely an experiment: an independent school for all classes, wholly secular, created by the joint efforts of half the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, on a wholly charitable basis, with a sliding scale of fees that truly did slide, and rather more than half the places reserved for those families who could pay little or nothing. Accusations that it was an absurdly hypertrophied grammar school trading under another name so as to avoid Labour hostility, or that it represented a tax dodge, or the conscience-money of HMC, or that its links to pupils from the Gulf and Pakistan were how it paid to educate the sons and daughters of the Black Country, the Head had learnt to ignore, just as he had learnt to accept the aid and occasional advice – and deflect any well-meant meddling – from his grander neighbours, immediate and remote, such as Denstone, Rugby, and (at a remove) Repton: not that these meant to overbear him, but school governors are kittle cattle and easily impressed, and the other HMC member schools, underwriting Hinksford for whatever motive, were sometimes too much with them.... (The Head Beak at Eton had taken him aside very early on and warned him, wisely, practically, and with much disinterested charity, to take the cash, pretend gratitude for the advice, use his own damned judgement, and yield not an inch.)

The shrilling bell sounded and fell silent. In the middle distance, the Head could just see Haz loosening his white, chef’s necktie, and Louis overborne by young athletes; a little further towards the horizon, Niall, laughing as always, was settling his guitar case on his shoulder; and the knot of cricketers on the horizon surrounded of course a figure the Head could have recognised at thrice the distance, in the dark, and blindfold: Liam.

As the bell died away, a group of Fifth Formers dashed past, there on Ward Walk (known inevitably, in the slang all schools develop, as Humble High Street), and the Head caught the tail end of one lad’s remarks.

‘– my brother. Mum’s all up in air, she says gap years are _dangerous,_ but –’

‘She’s quite right.’

The pupils immediately came to a halt and turned to make their traditional salutations to the Headmaster. ‘Sir?’

The Head smiled. ‘Dangerous things, gap years. No telling who’ll you’ll meet, or what may not happen....’

* * *

All manner of things, it is commonly imagined and expected, may and do befall on gap year travels: things exciting, or horrific, or fatal, or marvellous, or sexy. This expectation – bar the horror and fatality – is the primary reason why it is that young people go on gap year travels. (Zayn had read quite enough of his set books to know that the arrival of sweet-showering April and the insomniac warbling of birds keeping honest folk up all night, was insufficient to cause anyone nowadays to ‘long to go on pilgrimages’, least of all to Canterbury.)

Absolutely nothing exciting, or notable, or for that matter noticeable, is ever expected to befall – gap year or no – whilst crossing the forecourt of a petrol station. (Like fools, they’d pushed on past Stafford South services – Costa and McDonald’s had ceased to appeal – in the expectation of making the better-provided Hilton Park, with its dreams of M&S Simply Food and EDC … and Krispy Kreme. As it had happened, _they’d_ been the doughnuts. They’d been hitching rides on this leg – it was a long and sad tale – rather than going by rail or by coach as their families had intended; and their last ride had made … _certain suggestions_ … neither Zayn nor Louis had fancied in the least, let alone together. Fortunately, they’d been enough, the two of them, to prevent the driver’s _acting_ on his propositions, but they had found themselves afoot once more in short order, and far from any motorway junction at which they could conceivably hold out a thumb without finding HM Constabulary being the ones to stop for them. Accordingly, they were reduced at this point to crisps and a tin or two of piss-lager to drink with these, a quick look at the sandwiches on offer – purported-prawn-dubious-mayonnaise and visibly past it – having inclined them to a wise discretion.)

The forecourt, then, luridly lit, upon a dank, bone-chilling night: hardly the place for an epiphany.

Then again, epiphanies, by their nature, do rather tend to occur at unanticipated junctures and unexpected places – even petrol-station forecourts and motorway junctions, of a gap year’s night.

Louis had taken it upon himself to Keep Zayn Entertained on their travels: whether Zayn wished it or not. Partly this was owing to The Tommo’s incorrigible _need_ to play the clown and to talk incessantly; largely, however, it was his way of repaying Zayn for bringing him along and paying his way. This was not something Louis Tomlinson should have accepted from anyone else on the planet, his own mum included, and he had stressed that he intended to pay Zayn back, with interest, so soon as their travels ended and he began his career – university, it had transpired, had _not_ been for Louis – so soon as he began, then, his career as a development prospect for Leeds United.

That Louis accepted – however grudgingly and temporarily – any charity at all, even from Zayn, dated back to the years when things had been at their very worst in Donny, and Jay had, in desperation, taken a three-year contract offer with the NHS trust for the Bradford Teaching Hospitals consortium. Louis had been making a complete pig’s breakfast of his schooling, and she had hoped a change of scene and the threat of having to resit things might give him a much-needed swift boot up the backside. And Tong school had been at the time in its specialist academy phase....

Miraculously, Louis _had_ buckled down sufficiently to pass his GCSEs and even to snaffle up an A Level or two, if not in disciplines noted for academic rigour. This was a miracle in that he had wasted no time, once at Tong, in taking up unerringly with his perfect and predestined partner in crime, that same Zayn Malik, with whom – to the very edge of toleration by the staff (and, so far as Louis had been concerned, the sport staff, to whom alone he gave any obedience and whose displeasure alone he feared: his ambitions were already wholly on the pitch) – he swaggered (and, being Louis, minced, despite his desperate efforts to disguise it) about, pranking here, graffiti-ing there, and smoking fags everywhere. It had been, frankly, only Zayn’s keen wits and Louis’ undeniable talents with a football which had saved them at all from being cast into outer darkness; and, if Leeds as a university had not been much troubled by Zayn’s school-days reputation, Leeds United had made it very clear to Young Mr Tomlinson that, be he as talented as Jack Charlton, t’ lad wanted to shape oop if he expected t’ play for t’ Whites.

The friendship forged in school days, in fire and smoke (of various sorts) and battle, and in shared secrets and back-to-back defence of one another when Zayn was barracked and (verbally) bashed as a ‘Paki’ and Louis as a ‘poof’ – Zayn wondered, sometimes, if he’d have made it through at all had anyone known he was both, but he never wondered if Louis should have stuck by him even through that: he knew damned well that The Tommo should have done – that friendship had survived even the years just past, of Zayn’s BA (Hons) in English, Language and Education, and subsequent MA in Linguistics and English Language Teaching, and Louis’ grinding, grafting efforts to prove to the Peacocks at Elland Road that he _could_ become a responsible as well as a naturally-talented player.

Those school days of behaving badly and snogging boys in literal closets were behind them now (although Louis knew, with equal resignation and resentment, that the closet must be his portion if he were to follow his footballer’s dreams), but the bond these had built was unbreakable. And specially so on this gap year, this last hurrah before Louis presented himself to Mr Redfearn and Zayn began his last lap, of SCITT training as a probationary teacher seeking QTS: a gap year almost welcomed by the Maliks, and by Sgr Cellino himself, as being the last chance – with an implied ‘or else’ – for the lads to get the last of their nonsense out of their systems.

As witness – as a case in point – their being afoot, in a petrol-station forecourt, on a dank night in the Midlands, with backpacks containing nothing better than crisps and lager. On the one hand, it had been surprisingly responsible of them to have refused to ask for extra money from Zayn’s mum and dad when the tranche meant for this leg of the journey had become … unavailable. On the other, that the reason for this unexpected self-denial, and their not being in the comparative comfort of a coach or a railway carriage, was that they’d spent the mun on lager and cannabis, suggested that there was still work to be done in ‘getting the last of their nonsense out of their systems’.

That very thing was the ground of Louis’ stream-of-semi-consciousness riff as they tramped, a riff to which Zayn’s contribution was just sufficient murmurings of agreement and well-timed sniggers to assure Louis he was listening (although they both knew better. It was purely conventional).

‘– and _I_ said –’

Zayn was not attending. Well: not to Louis. A fact to which Louis twigged not only by Zayn’s failure to respond to his monologue, but through his running into Zayn as that man stopped still as any stock and simply stared across the forecourt.

There was absolute justification for Zayn’s being struck silent and motionless, felt Louis. The man – of an age with the two of them, but very much a _man_ – crossing the forecourt was not precisely Louis’ type, but he assuredly might be for several hours if so inclined – and welcome. Shoulders. Muscles. Heat. _Leather._ Then the bloke passed into a better-lit area, just as Zayn was breathing out, ‘ _Who_ is _that?_ ’: and, his incongruously sweet face beneath the scruff being illuminated, Louis realised, with a sharp intake of breath, that he knew the answer to Zayn’s question.

‘Christ,’ said Louis. ‘It’s – it can’t be. But it is. It’s _Payno._ ’

Zayn gibbered, quietly. It really _couldn’t_ be Liam Payne. Then again, it couldn’t possibly be anyone else.

The body was no longer that of the young harrier, a friend of a friend of a friend of one of Louis’ sport acquaintances, who had once, shyly, allowed himself to be dragged to a party in Bradford after a meet. The Bieber-esque haircut was gone the way of the lankiness (reminiscing, Louis had once said, ‘That bloke from Wolvo you were mad for, the runner with the emo-twink look who played guitar and sang when he wasn’t being scouted for the Olympics –’: to which Zayn, interrupting in strategic haste, had replied by asserting that if he were into twinks nowadays, Louis might have a look in with him after all, which had caused the whole conversation, to Zayn’s relief, to descend into a wrestling bout punctuated by The Tommo’s squawks of outrage). But that face, even with its planes fined into manliness, was the same, unmistakeably. Those lips … Zayn remembered (Zayn had never been able – or willing – to _forget_ ) those lips, from a brief, relatively chaste snog at that party six years before, all shyness and blushes (and the blushes had been mutual, which had frightened Zayn, who had long since adopted an unblushing sexual persona, fronting it to hide his own natural shyness: but there had been something about that lad from Wolvo far, with his earnest eyes and soft burr...).

‘It’s a good thing you’re “not into twinks these days”,’ said Louis, with all the sark he could muster. ‘That one could hold you down and shag you rotten just as you like, now. _What_ are you _waiting_ for, you buggering idiot? Go get your man!’

Stumbling from Louis’ unexpected shove, Zayn found himself beginning to run, like a lunatic, across the forecourt, and calling. ‘Liam?’ He couldn’t manage to get enough air to make himself heard. He slowed his steps. ‘ _Leeyum?_ ’

* * *

Liam had hoped, he really had, to get through this stop without incident. It took everything in him not to turn ’round at the first, faint, hesitant call of his name; but, he supposed, with a sigh inwardly suppressed, that was to be his life, going forwards, and it was no longer safe nor wise to yield to his natural friendliness.

But – ‘ _Leeyum?_ ’ Those accents were familiar, and not local; and only one person had ever pronounced his name in just that way, like a caress. He spun ’round.

It simply couldn’t be. But it was. It could be no one else. A little taller, a bit leaner – worryingly so – and delectably scruffier. _Zayn._ There was nothing he could do save to open his arms wide and _beam,_ as Zayn, with an answering look of sheer joy radiating from him, ran – like a drunken penguin even yet – and threw himself, gloriously, into Liam’s embrace as they spun cinematically on the tarmac.

Louis, with rather more than his usual charity and indulgence, gave them a full four minutes of tightly-clasped hugging, noses nuzzling in necks (and was – was Zayn _sniffing_ Payno’s disgustingly dear-looking leather jacket? God knew what the damned thing had _cost_ ), and murmured How-have-you-beens and What-are-you-up-tos and I’ve-missed-you- _so_ -muches before he cleared his throat loudly and dramatically (which, to be fair, was the way The Tommo lived his very _life_ ).

Zayn rolled his eyes – and fought down a stab of jealousy – as a squawking Louis was suddenly enfolded, and lifted well off the ground, by Liam’s bear-hug. (Louis was paddling his feet in the air like a dachshund wishing to be Put Down This _Instant,_ How Very _Dare_ You?, This Is an _Outrage,_ but, like the hypothetical dachshund, was fooling no one into thinking he was not in fact revelling in the cuddling.)

‘What,’ said Liam with a smile larger than Wales, as he put Louis down at last, ‘are you two Tykes doing down here?’

‘Gap year,’ mumbled Zayn, slipping under Liam’s welcoming arm to snuggle into his lovely, lovely jacket once more.

‘Oh! Before you sign on fully with the Damned United, Tommo?’

Both Yorkshire lads stared at Liam, who blushed.

‘Leeyum?’

‘Stan and Andy still keep in touch,’ said he, turning an attractive rosy pink as he looked at his boots.

‘Oh,’ said Louis, and paled. Well, Zayn could understand that: the idea that those two kept in touch.... Lucas and Samuels, dear God: _never_ trust the Welsh, they were tricksy.

Wait, though – Zayn was suddenly very put out. ‘Tommo?’

‘Um. What _are_ you doing these days, Mistah Payne?’

‘Tommo!’ Put out be damned. Matter of that, _browned off_ be damned. Zayn was simply murderous.

‘I’m sorry!’ Louis actually sounded panicked. ‘I’ve been trying to keep on the straight and narrow, I haven’t – I thought it best I not – I don’t see much of Stan these days!’

Oh. That made sense. In fact, it was probably wise. All the same, if it had hurt Liam to discover that they’d not kept up with news of him whilst he’d asked after _them...._

‘No, it’s all right,’ said Liam, earnest as ever, and as ever incapable of guile. Then he smiled, with innocent pride. ‘I’m a Bear now.’

Louis, incapable as always of resisting temptation, raked a glance down one side of Liam and back up the other. ‘No, love, you’re too fit. “Otter” I will concede, you manly, hairy beast, but you haven’t the weight to be a _bear._ ’

Liam blushed as he laughed. ‘No, no – I mean – Christ, no. I’m with Warwickshire now.’

Zayn was openly confused. Was there a rugger club by that name? A League One football club? ‘You were a runner. You look like a bloody boxer, now.’

‘Well, I did that for a bit, too – reckoned, well, it worked for Freddie and all. But....’

‘It certainly filled him out nicely, _didn’t it,_ Zaynie?’ Zayn gave Louis a look which strongly suggested that a proving of his estate and a dignified memorial service was in his immediate future. ‘But I don’t see Our Liam really liking to hit people.’

‘Well, no, actually. But it turned out there was one thing I _can_ hit, pretty regularly. _Boundaries._ ’

Zayn just kept himself from hitting: not a boundary, but rather his forehead with his hand. Of all the ways in which – love him though they did – he was a mild disappointment to his father, and his uncles, and not a few of his aunts, and indeed most of his cousins, the most profound (as in many a Desi family) was in his failure to be as cricket-mad as the rest of them. Although if the long-lost love of his life, future husband, and eventual co-father of their children were now playing for a first-class county, then Zayn, resolved he, should be a walking _Wisden_ by morning.

Louis at least understood these things, as being not wholly dissimilar to his own world of sport, and whistled softly. ‘Batsman or all-rounder?’

Liam winced, humorously. ‘Oh, God, I can’t bowl to save me life, and no one’s going to put me up as the best fielder since Colly, let alone Jonty, but they seem to think I’m not bad with the willow.’

‘You’ll be captaining England at twenty-six,’ said Zayn, loyally: and basked in Liam’s delighted, if reproving and humble, smile. Accompanying headshake or no.

‘Look,’ said Liam, with an air of sudden decision. Zayn found himself getting impossibly harder – and he’d been trying, mind, to hide the horn since he’d first seen Liam again after a cruelly long time. Take-Charge Liam, in his maturity, was, it transpired, one of Zayn’s most reliable kinks: who’d’ve known? ‘If you two aren’t on a tight schedule –’

Before The Tommo could say (as he was clearly itching to say) something devastating about _tightness,_ Zayn cut in, hastily: ‘We’re not.’

‘– Oh, super. Why don’t you put up with me for the night?’

Zayn couldn’t possibly have pipped Louis to the post in swiftly accepting this … proposition _(please,_ please _let it_ be _a proposition,_ inshallah). For one thing, Zayn couldn’t speak. For another, he dared not try: squealing like a teen-aged girl should do _dreadful_ things to what was left of his image. But he nodded _very_ vigorously. Putting up – in both senses – with Liam was what he wished to do every night for the rest of their lives.

* * *

Zayn was absurdly pleased to find that Liam had not _changed:_ he had _grown._ He drove an Audi, not a Bentley (admittedly, it was the A8, but it was an Audi all the same). He no longer lived in Wolvo – the world and his fans and, Zayn suspected, his family being too much with him, there – but he hadn’t moved to Brum, either (or, to be precise as regarded his likely temptations, to sacred Edgbaston): he lived in a superb but not grand house, on two acres rather than a stately holding, outside peaceful Wombourne, beyond Smestow, privacy assured. He was sane, gentle, sensible, level of head, generous of heart, and even now as sweet as gulab jamun at Eid. Zayn knew these things to be true, had known them to be true in the very moment he had fallen once more into Liam’s (magnificent, wonderful, _why_ was no one writing _sonnets_ about them) arms.

(Louis was sending looks in his direction which suggested he thought Zayn was – and was his smitten state _that_ evident? – going far too far, far too quickly; but what did _Louis_ know?)

Louis, impressed, was at pains to denigrate the house as they entered. ‘Not really WAG country here, is it, Payno?’

‘Well, as I’d be looking for a SPAB....’

‘That’s historic buildings,’ said Zayn, dripping fondness.

Liam managed to giggle – somehow yet manfully – and shrug simultaneously. ‘I meant “Spouses, Partners, and Boyfriends”.’

Louis rolled his eyes. ‘As if you could.’

‘Why not?’ Liam was honestly puzzled. ‘I’m out, after all.’

Louis glared at him.

‘Oh,’ said Liam. ‘You’re not?’

‘No,’ said Louis with the elaborate patience one directs towards an idiot child, a politician, or a journalist. ‘Because _I_ plan to play _football_.’

‘But.’

‘Oh, that’s right,’ snarled Louis. ‘Steven Davies can come out and the old men in the Pavilion clap politely, because anything else _just wouldn’t be_ _ **cricket,**_ after all. But _we_ end up as _suicides_. I’m surprised you’ve not been on chat shows and front pages –’

‘’M not important enough, mate –’

‘Must be ever so lovely, being in a sport where no one _cares._ ’

‘Well,’ said Liam – earnestly –, ‘there are. I mean, yes, Jimmy posed for _Attitude_ bare-arsed, at his wife’s urging, and he and Chef and Broady did that nude shot for the prostate cancer appeal, and no one’s fussed about Davo. But. Davo hasn’t been capped for England since. And – I’m not saying _I’ll_ ever get a central contract –’

Zayn made a protesting sort of noise.

‘– but, whether I do or don’t. Well. I can’t very well play in the IPL when there’s no cricket in England. And there are.’ Liam swallowed hard and very carefully did not look at Zayn. ‘There are – let alone if I _were_ capped for England – certain venues they’d think it best I not play at, and certain teams I’d best not play against. Sort of thing Davo had to face up to, and one reason he didn’t replace the Big Cheese, keeping wicket, before Jos and Jonny came of age.’

Zayn suddenly realised just what venues and which national sides Liam, with clear discomfort and earnest determination not to offend, was referring to. Dubai, and every Test cricket ground in Pakistan, and every international side representing a majority Muslim country. Worst of all, he suspected that Liam and the ECB were, much against their will, quite right to assume he’d be in danger. Far too many of his simpler co-religionists, for whom cricket was bound up with their sense of national identity and to whom it, more than Islam, was a religion, should indeed be ill-disposed to the presence of an openly gay cricketer on the visiting side.

He felt suddenly ill.

Louis appeared to sense this, and softened. ‘Sorry, Payno. I oughtn’t to have taken it out on you. I’m glad there _are_ sports more enlightened than bleedin’ footie is.’ He sighed. ‘Look, can I smoke?’

Liam rocked on his heels, a bit. ‘Um. If you must, you can step outside?’

‘Christ, Payno, I only meant _tobacco._ ’

‘I should ruddy hope so! Tommo, you’re an _athlete,_ you’re meant to be in _training,_ you really don’t want to be smoking _anything_ –’

‘God, Payno, Zaynie’s the only one here who’d get off on calling you, “Daddy”, you’re not me step-dad!’

Zayn was blushing too hard to speak, and Liam, also tinted like a sunset, wisely left this ungentlemanly ball, as unplayable. The next, however, he hit for six, even off the back foot.

‘You’re not bloody Wenger,’ added Louis.

‘Tommo, think, won’t you? _You_ can change the things you’re stressing over. Do so well at Leeds you’re bought up by, oh, United, or for that matter Villa or the Gooners, or Spurs –’

Zayn, recovering from his shock, muttered something about Chelsea’s being appropriate and what a lovely Rent Boy Louis’d make, which caused Louis to transfer his death-glare from Liam to Zayn.

‘– and train so hard they can’t _not_ make you England captain. And then, when you’re being carried off shoulder-high after a famous victory, _then_ come out – and make the bastards wear it! And for that, you want to have your wind and be top fit and have your head straight.’

‘But –’

‘And what about sex?’

Zayn just suppressed, by main force, the urge to respond with _Yes, please,_ and, _Take me now,_ and, _My body is ready._

Louis simply goggled at Liam.

‘ _Much_ better, I find, when you’re in perfect shape and have your wind and are dead sober.’

Through the roseate fog that seemed to cloud his dilated vision, Zayn though he saw Louis shaking his head as if to clear it. ‘Payno.... You. You’re the sort, after he’s done playing, doesn’t go on TMS or the lecture circuit or does adverts – though you might do, you baby Becks. Good thing Zayn’s always been a bit … posh – you’re the sort becomes a sport mongol, aren’t you.’

‘Um.’ Liam’s tone suggested he was torn between several possible emotions. ‘I think – I _hope,_ because I may be thick but I’m not _that_ thick, anyroadup – I _think_ the word you meant was, er, “mogul”.’

‘Like the emperors,’ said Zayn, deliberately unhelpfully and in a tone that was dry as Beaune.

‘Oh, _shit,_ ’ said Louis, and began babbling apologies to Liam (for inadvertently calling him a mongol, and indeed for using that slur at all) and to Zayn alike (for appropriating the term Moghul for the concept of Successful Businessman). Zayn and Liam carefully declined to catch one another’s eye, lest they burst into laughter and let Louis off the hook he so well adorned and had so long had coming.

* * *

A quarter hour after, as Liam bustled about his kitchen (‘No, please, Mrs B leaves all these little meals and snacks, and we can have something light, five minutes and I’ll have it out of the micro-wossit’), Louis, having promised to begin tapering off, was standing in the garden, smoking.

He offered Zayn a fag, and did a double-take when it was declined.

‘I think I’ll give over smoking.’

‘My God. Zaynie.... You do have it bad, mate.’

Zayn shrugged.

‘No,’ said Louis. ‘No, no, _no._ I care too much about you. Look, he’s a super lad, but. _Zayn._ You kissed him once six years prior, and we’ve seen him for, what, an hour now? And –’

‘And I never forgot that kiss, or him, and. Seeing him, getting to _know_ him all over again.... It’s as if the last six years are suddenly concentrated in _now,_ and rewriting themselves retrospectively into six years of pining and falling in love.’

Louis sighed. ‘I’d best not be obliged to do, but if – _if,_ and I don’t think it’ll be wanted – if it all goes tits-up, I’ll be here to help pick up the pieces. It won’t, though. He’s as gone on you as you are on him.’

Zayn threw an arm around his shoulders. ‘I know you would do. And I know you’ll needn’t. Because I know he is.’

Louis, seeing Zayn’s wild smile in the darkness, couldn’t help but grin back.

* * *

‘Mum? No, we’re fine, I’m just – yes, Mum, ringing up to – _Mum._ We’re between Brum and Wolverhampton, and breaking our journey, like. Well, funny you should ask – _no,_ Mum. Do you remember Liam Payne? Yeah, Mum, but he’s not a runner nowadays, he – look, Baba’ll want to hear this too – Baba, you remember Liam Payne? Yes, the skinny kid who ran – we’re stopping with him – no, he’s not at uni, Baba – not, it’s _not_ a _squat_ – well, he’s still an athlete, just not a runner nowadays – Baba, I expected better of _you,_ go online and go to the Warks CCC page – _Yes!_ That’s what I’m telling you – yes, of course....’

* * *

Zayn insisted on helping Liam clear the plates. (Louis had seized the opportunity _not_ to do, on the ground, possibly specious, that ‘he’d give them some time to catch up together’.)

‘They were proper chuffed, like,’ said Zayn. ‘Me being old friends with a first-class cricketer.’

Liam blushed, and smiled, and bit his lip, causing Zayn very nearly to drop a plate, sweep the others off the table, and fall back upon it with his arms open and his legs spread.

‘I’m proper chuffed, too,’ said Liam. ‘I’ve missed you every day for six years.’

Zayn, wide-eyed, looked at him with his mouth hanging open in a way that no one else could possibly have pulled off without looking unattractive. _Zayn,_ reflected Liam, managed all the same.

‘Too much,’ said Liam: ‘I’m sorry. I said too much –’

‘ _No!_ No. I have, too. I didn’t even realise until I saw you again. It’s like – it’s like chronic pain, and you don’t register it any longer, and then, it’s healed, suddenly, and –’

‘And you realise it had been hurting all that time. And you can’t believe how good it feels to not hurt any longer.’

‘ _Yes,_ ’ breathed Zayn. ‘Exactly.’

Their faces were very close, now, both realised with mild surprise: breaths mingling, lips almost touching.

‘Oh, _fuck_ me,’ said Louis from the doorway as they sprang apart. ‘I’m –’ he yawned, wrenchingly – ‘I am _so_ sorry, but I am dead on me shapely feet. Where do I sleep?’

‘Oh, God,’ said Liam. ‘I am the _worst_ host, it’s late, you’ve been through a full day –’

‘’S all right, babe,’ said Zayn, in a tone none of the three of them, Zayn very much included, had ever heard him use, and which two of them at least resolved he should use a good deal more in future.

‘I’ll. Yes. Your rooms,’ said Liam, trying for firmness and missing it by miles. Well: vocally, at least. Firmness of other sorts was no problem at all just then.

He all but shooed them along to two comfortably chintz-and-challis guest bedrooms, both with en suites, both eminently ready for occupancy, and both clearly never occupied since the last time his family had stopped for a night.

‘Any requests for breakfast? I usually have it as late as eight, after my run and training, but I remember Zayn’s allergic to mornings –’

‘Any time is fine, babe. Any time at all.’

Louis opened his gob to speak, then shut it with a snap.

‘I’m. Okay, I’m just down three doors. If anyone wants anything in the night. Um.’

Louis didn’t even bother. He was too tired and this was _too_ easy. Like, apparently, Zayn for Liam, and the other way ’round.

‘Good night. Sleep well.’ Liam punctuated this kindly wish with a swift hug for Louis and a much more lingering one, full of aching tenderness, for a Zayn who simply melted into it. Greatly daring, he dropped a kiss on Zayn’s brow, and all but scuttled down the corridor to his own bedroom.

Zayn pinned Louis with a look. ‘Not. One. _Word,_ ’ said he, and opened the door to his guest room. Louis simply yawned in his face, and flounced into his own room, shutting the door firmly in what could not, quite, be called a slam.

* * *

Liam was not one for sleeping late. Nor for hiding his happiness. By 7.0, he’d already tweeted, from his (verified) personal account, @Pukka_Payne: 

 

> Two old friends tsopping over!!!! Smashin lads Louis and zAyn!

By 7.5, he’d had the nous to determine their proper – albeit unverified – accounts, and add,

 

> Gotta love seeing @zjmalik & @TomlinsonL again! Gangsters!

By 8.0, Twitter was gently mocking him, his team mates – and his sisters – were once again taking the piss (largely over his inability to spell _or_ type), and Zayn’s and Louis’ Twitter followings were sky-rocketing. Those of Liam’s followers who were _not_ following him for the cricket (wink, nudge, say no more) had discovered Louis’ and Zayn’s rather limited social media presence, and were, many of then, slashing away feverishly.

His parents had long since learnt to stay away from Twitter.

* * *

The morning, greeted by Liam’s tweets and by your actual birdsong, had dawned clear and keen and crisp, cloudless beneath a Limoges sky. Zayn was up and about by an unprecedented eight – which was more than Louis could boast – and went down to find the kitchen bereft of any Liam. The kitchen window, however, revealed a distant sight of Liam, running, but – sadly – at too great a distance to be properly admired. Zayn wandered about for a bit – he’d not seen as much of the house as he should have liked, the night before – until he found a sofa that seemed to be entreating him for company.

He woke, half an hour later, in a fashion he immediately resolved to make daily for the rest of his life: with a bright-eyed Siberian Husky puppy smiling at him and a gentle hand stroking his cheek.

‘Hullo.’

‘Mm. _Leeyum...._ And who’s this, hmm?’

‘Zayn, meet Loki.’

‘Oh, _Christ,_ ’ said Louis, who had once more managed to turn up on a cue not scripted for him. Loki bounded over to make his second new friend of the morning. ‘The two of you … comic geeks to boot, Jesus, just what we wanted. As if you weren’t soul-mates already.’

Liam once again, and characteristically, shrugged and giggled at once, stifling his laughter in his shoulder. Zayn decided at once that this simply wasn’t on, henceforward. If Liam wanted a shoulder to hide his face in as he laughed, Zayn had two perfectly good ones for the purpose.

‘Why,’ asked Louis, desperately changing the subject he had incautiously broached, ‘did we not meet this charmer last night?’ Loki was ecstatically submitting to a good scratch between the ears. Zayn sympathised: Louis did nothing for him, but _he’d_ submit ecstatically to anything _Liam_ gave out.

‘He was asleep outside.’

‘Liam Payne! It was bloody _cold_ last night!’ Louis was quite genuinely outraged.

Zayn rolled his eyes – a habit he had picked up from Louis, who resorted far too frequently to that gesture. ‘Siberian Husky, Tommo?’

Liam’s response was more emollient. ‘He really does insist. Daytime, or in Summer, he likes to sleep inside, near me.’ And who, thought Zayn rhetorically, could blame him? ‘But when it’s cold....’

‘Mph.’ Louis seemed unconvinced. ‘So long as we all slept well, then – even if we _weren’t_ all precisely where we wished to be for it. _Did_ you sleep well, Zaynie?’ He then added, primly, before an answer could volley back, ‘ _I_ certainly did.’

To Louis’ utter delight (and precisely as he had intended), Liam and Zayn both blushed. They were certainly, reflected Louis, getting _their_ cardio, thanks to him.

Zayn managed a steady voice, all the same. ‘Once I fell asleep, yes, thank you.’

Louis smirked. Just as well sweet innocent puppies had slept outside, reflected he, with the no doubt furious wanking in two rooms of the house.

‘Breakfast?’ Liam’s voice was a little strangled as he asked.

* * *

Breakfast was – for something so relentless _healthy,_ thought Louis, mutinously – quite good.

‘So,’ asked Liam, ‘where is it you were making for?’

‘London,’ said Zayn, ‘and then the Continent.’

And he and Louis explained, antiphonically, their gap year plan, and even all the reasons for it, not omitting the ‘getting the last of their nonsense out of their systems’ bit.

Liam was thoughtful. ‘Look,’ said he at last. ‘I’ve an idea. I don’t wish to take things over –’

Louis actually _watched_ as Zayn’s breathing became shallow and his pupils dilated. There were some things a bloke neither wished nor wanted to know about his friend’s kinks. Well, save for piss-taking purposes.

‘– but. Hear me out.’

Louis had a strong suspicion that, so long as Liam were proposing anything short of a three-way, Zayn was in. (And if he _were_ proposing a three-way, Louis did not quite trust himself to decline.)

‘’Course,’ said Zayn, all indulgence. Louis really thought he might sick up if this kept on.

‘Did you mean to make it a full year, _really?_ ’

‘Well,’ frowned Louis. ‘I don’t – it’s a manner of speaking, really, but I can’t see us being away for an actual _year._ We do have lives to start. And jobs, which is amazing, really, the bloody Coalition and the cuts –’

Zayn was all too well aware that Louis, as a former constituent of one Ed Miliband MP and the son of an NHS nurse, could bang on for _hours_ on this topic (and all too well aware that his own father and uncles, at least, tended to hold their noses and vote Tory, particularly now that a certain type of Tory had defected to the Kippers: when Bonaparte had dismissed Britain as a ‘nation of shopkeepers’, he’d not foreseen the greatest wave of shopkeepers yet, the British Asians of the future). And wasn’t this bit of the West Midlands rather Blue?

He hastened to change the subject back to what it had been. ‘No, babe, it wasn’t meant to be an actual year, like.’

Liam beamed. ‘All right, then. What if. I mean, it’s up to you, love –’

All three of them went suddenly still.

‘I. It’s up to you. And Louis. But. Why don’t we all go together?’

‘ _Yes._ ’ Zayn did not hesitate.

‘Louis? I’m not trying to invite meself along, it’s – it’s simply –’

‘It’s fine, Payno.’

‘I thought. Well. Look. You want to prove yourselves – you, Tommo, to the Whites, and you to your Mum and Dad, Zayn. If, when you get back, you can tell them you didn’t simply tramp about Europe boozing....’

‘What,’ asked Louis, with grudging interest, ‘did you have in mind?’

‘If you came back, Tommo, able to say you’d scouted about and you’d been to half the grounds in Ligue 1 – I mean, look at Lille – Stade Pierre-Mauroy and that – ’s the first place you get off the Eurostar, isn’t it? – and La Liga – Camp Nou and Bernabéu –’

Louis’ face was transformed by excitement. ‘Allianz in the Bundesliga, Juventus in Serie A –’

‘So, I can get us our Interrail passes here in two days –’

Louis voice and affect were suddenly flat as a failed soufflé. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Tommo –’

‘No. I am _not_ a charity object.’

‘Of course you’re not. You’re my f- –’

‘“Friend”? We knew each other, briefly and distantly, six years ago for two days, and unlike some of us _I_ haven’t been pining for six years –’

Liam cut off a furious retort from Zayn. ‘Some of us have been. Yes. Which is why I was going to say, “future brother-in-law” – if Zayn’ll have me when the time comes.’

‘You can have him right now, that’s obvious,’ sarked Louis.

‘Don’t,’ said Zayn, hotly, ‘be a pric- –’

‘Don’t be prickly,’ said Liam, overriding Zayn. ‘ _I’m_ playing now. You’ll be playing next year in _your_ sport, and there’s no doubt you’d pay me back with interest. But I’m investing in _you,_ Tommo. All right? You and me, mate, stars now and sport mo- – sport impresarios after. Right? Seems like a sensible _investment_ to me.’

‘A sensible inv- … all right. _Christ._ All _right_. You invest sensibly, Payno. You bought a flipping _Audi._ Fine, then. We’ll do it your way. But I do it under protest, I do it all for Zaynie’s grand romance, and I do it with as little grace as possible.’

Zayn snorted. ‘Yeah, and you could gurn for England. Give over, mate, you’re sussed.’

‘And what’s in it for you two? At this point, you could send me off and you two stay here and shag each other rotten until I come back.’

‘Actually,’ said Liam, whose hand was now firmly and, it appeared permanently, clasped in Zayn’s, ‘I was thinking of ringing up Alexei.’

Zayn thought for a moment, and brightened as the penny dropped and an answer hove into view. ‘Kervezee?’

Liam beamed at him, delighted beyond measure that Zayn had twigged. (He’d had no choice. Alexei Kervezee, the Dutch international, played after all for Worcs CCC, a county side Zayn perforce kept up with owing to the presence thereupon of Moeen Ali, whom one at least of his uncles regarded as the cricketing-equivalent-to-Jinnah _des nos jours_.)

This was explained to an ostentatiously bored Tommo. ‘So,’ concluded Liam, equably, ‘I ought at least to be able to poke about Hazelaarweg, and the VRA ground as well, perhaps take a few in the nets – you, love,’ added he to Zayn, ‘can meet Ahsan Malik – and get to know some of the Netherlands side, for one.

‘Love?’ (Zayn preened to hear himself so apostrophised.) ‘You know I’m not, well, clever like you. I _know_ there was something about Venice, and about Verona, but – I can never remember, was it Dutch or Danish that Hamlet was?’

‘Danish, babe.’

‘Then we’ll go to Denmark as well as Venice and Verona for you.’

Zayn looked adoringly at Liam. ‘All right, babe. But there really _isn’t_ a coast in Bohemia, so as you know.’

Louis buried his face in his hands. They were like this already, and they hadn’t so much as _snogged_ yet. _Ridiculous._ Then a dismaying thought occurred to him. ‘Wait. What about Loki?’

‘We can’t bring him along,’ said Liam, with regret. ‘They’d quarantine him coming home. One of me sisters can stop here and watch the house while we’re away. I’ll miss his furry face, but....’

 _Oh, yes,_ thought Louis. _**But**_ _. Let’s hope Zaynie can find a teaching programme in Dudley, because this is_ one _future as is already set in stone, ba goom._

* * *

Twitter was having a field day. Particularly once they saw the tweet from @TomlinsonL:

 

>  Lovely lad, @Pukka_Payne. Good to see an old mate again. Pity he bangs on about cricket. #FootieRules!

Some of the more fannish hashtags now trending were enough to make even The Tommo blush.

* * *

‘Jay, dear. Thank you for stopping by. Tea?’

‘Please. And lashings of it. This awful weather....’

‘I _know._ ’ Trisha brought out sandwiches and biscuits and cakes as well. ‘Do you recall Liam Payne?’

* * *

Louis had spent much of the day with Loki – and the Internet: lap and laptop. He was hard-pressed to continue concealing his excitement over Liam’s Actually Quite Brilliant Plan. Mind, it was easier to do with Liam and Zayn away, they having vanished soon after breakfast. He was resolutely refusing to imagine what they were up to.

In fact, they were walking, now, along the Canal tow path (having left the Wom Brook Walk at Giggety), having first driven about as Liam had showed off his village, and Sedgley, and great Dudley itself (with special attention to schools, including specialist academies). In a comfortable silence, holding hands, Zayn simply basked. It was as if, suddenly, everything had fallen into place, even the things he had not known to have been out of place.

‘Y’ know,’ said he, quietly. ‘You’re free to kiss me whenever you like.’

Liam stopped and turned towards him. ‘We’ll starve, or die of lack of sleep,’ said he. ‘Because that is all the time.’

And then he set about proving it.

* * *

When Zayn and Liam returned – to Loki’s traitorous delight – Louis very nearly went and locked himself in his room. They might – _might_ – not have shagged (yet), but the glow which surrounded them was simply sickening to any sensible cynic.

Particularly one who had already seen Liam’s Instagram snap of the two of them on the tow path, a snap which, although there was not even so much as physical contact between them, simply shouted ‘love’s young dream’.

Louis was arrested in his plans to slope off swiftly when Liam said, casually, ‘Oh: me parents are joining us for dinner tonight.’

‘Oh, _good,_ ’ said Louis, faintly. ‘Probably best they _meet_ Zayn before the wedding. Unless you spent the afternoon at the Register Office?’

Liam giggled – and hid his head in _Zayn’s_ shoulder this time. ( _Success,_ thought Zayn, smugly.) ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Liam, ‘you’re required to give sixteen days’ notice, and it’d bugger up passports and tickets and things.’

Louis stood, slowly, and stalked out without a word.

* * *

Geoff and Karen – plumply comfortable people with no side to them: he being very much the solid incarnation of that bluff, Midlands probity, leavened with humour, of the master craftsman (indeed, the cunning artificer) or small tradesman; she, three parts Black Country housewife to one part superior charwoman – swept in like a bracing wind, and, being reintroduced to their son’s guests, swiftly shifted to another quarter, a soft, Summertide breeze. ‘Tomlinson the footballer-to-be? I remember your name, lad,’ said Geoff; and, ‘Zayn? Oh, love,’ said Karen, ‘you’ve got handsomer yet, you have, no wonder Our Kid is over the moon to’ve found you again.’

‘When’s the wedding, son?’ Geoff also was beaming at him, and Zayn hardly knew how to conceal his overflowing affections. ‘You’ve been the king o’ his heart, lad, since you was sixteen the both of you.’

Liam interjected, with an admirable absence of embarrassment for which Zayn simply adored him, ‘We’re off to Europe first, Dad, we can sort the wedding when we get home.’

‘Europe?’ Karen was almost weeping with happy excitement. ‘Ooh, that’s bostin’, it is. Fancy that! Europe, Geoff!’

‘Cart before the ’oss,’ said Geoff, wagging his finger. ‘Honeymoon and all did ought to come second, you know.’

‘Oh, Geoff, behave yourself, do.’

‘I don’t suppose as you’ll be home before Christmas, either.’ As Geoff pointed that out, Karen’s face fell. ‘Don’t you make a habit of missing family dos, now, you two, I have to live with your mum, _and_ your sisters.’

‘I don’t reckon,’ said Liam, with dignity, ‘we’ll be home for Christmas _this_ year; but this bain’t just a jaunt. Spoke with Alexei, I did, and I’m going to poke about the Dutch pitches; and Louis is going to scout the Continental football clubs and their grounds.’

‘Oh, that _is_ clever,’ said Karen, doing her best to reconcile herself to missing Liam – and, it appeared, Zayn – over Christmas. ‘And you, love? Do you play a sport?’

Before Zayn could say something humble and self-deprecating, Liam, arm around his waist, announced with pride (and in the accents of a town crier) that, ‘Mum, he’s an honours degree in English and all, and he’s going to teach. We’ve already looked at schools hereabouts and all.’

Karen uttered a happy – and impressed – little noise and began rooting in her handbag for her smartphone. Geoff caught Louis’ eye and nodded towards a doorway. It was the look and the nod of a man who knew where the whisky was.

Once they were safely ensconced in Liam’s in-house cinema – he was sensible, he wasn’t seventy and an ascetic – and Geoff had poured them each a lavish peg, he turned a quizzical eye on The Tommo. ‘I met you, lad, for ten minutes – and you dragged there by Zayn, and _him_ by Ant and Danny (I always _did_ want to call them “Ant and Dec”) – at a meet, six years gone. You loathed every minute of it. Zayn, he were bored out of his mind. So tell me, lad, how is it that Our Liam’s kept in touch with Zayn all this time and romanced him and all, and us not know next anunst to nothing about it?’

Louis couldn’t help himself. He simply broke down into laughter, and then explained.

* * *

‘All I can say,’ said Geoff, as he put a bit more gravy on his lamb and mash, ‘I don’t care if Zayn becomes a life peer for services to education and you captain England in the Ashes for twenty years, you _can’t_ put up a blue “This Be Where They Met Again” plaque in the forecourt of a petrol station.’

‘Geoff Payne,’ said Karen at her most minatory, ‘you be quiet, I think it’s dead romantic, I do. You’ve no romance in your soul, my dear. And don’t wommuck your victuals.’

Geoff gave his wife a considering look. ‘No romance? Seems as I recall a night down Temple Street....’

Karen blushed prettily. ‘It weren’t worth a blue plaque,’ said she, pettishly.

‘Just as well,’ said Geoff. ‘We’d want to put up blue plaques over half Wolvo and a good bit o’ Bilston and Wednesfield, that were the standard.’

It was Liam’s turn – well past his turn really, thought Louis, vindictively – to bury his face in his hands.

* * *

‘Don’t you mind Our Geoff, love,’ said Karen to Zayn over the pudding. ‘’E’m not but coddin’, mostly. We bist a family as falls hard and fast, and none the wusser for that.’

* * *

Improbably swift romance was not, apparently, the only hereditary Payne speciality. Four days on, with the house and a dejected Loki left in the care of Liam’s sisters, turn and turn about, Liam, Zayn, and Louis found themselves in a first class carriage hurtling – more or less, and so far as Virgin Trains anymore than London Midland can ever be said to hurtle – from Sandwell and Dudley station to London Euston, thence to take the Tube to St Pancras and board the Eurostar for Lille.

Louis had closed his eyes and was affecting sleep. Improbably. And quite as improbably, he’d managed, apparently, to sell that dummy to Zayn and Liam. Or, rather, to ZaynAndLiam, this horrible, appalling entity that had come so suddenly into being. At any rate, they were murmuring – sweet nothings, no doubt – to one another in low voices as they cuddled appallingly. It was sickening. But it did suggest they – _it:_ the ZaynAndLiam Entity, the beast with four arms, four legs, two backs, and half a working brain between it (love makes people _stupid_ ) – had actually bought his pretended sleep. Absurd; it really was.

As absurd as this sudden – well, it wasn’t even a sudden _romance,_ was it? It was like magnetising two halves of sommat complicated, some machine or that, and then stepping back and watching them snap together and it start up on its own. This sort of thing simply didn’t _happen,_ not even in all that musty literature Zayn read for reasons Louis had never grasped. By God, they’d expected _him_ to read all that balls to get a degree before he could play footie, they’d’ve had their old books shoved up ’em....

Oh, Liam had been a lovely little lad six years gone, for the two days they’d been his casual acquaintances (come to that, apparently Zaynie’d managed sommat more than casual acquaintance, snogging the near-stranger at a party, but the case were hardly altered by _that_ ). And he _seemed_ like a right ’un now. Which was as well: Zaynie was Louis’ brother-by-choice, and if Liam by any chance _did_ hurt him, well, it’d be a nine-month’s wonder in the red-tops when Louis responded in the only possible way: _Promising Footballer Charged in Murder of Warks Cricketer._

Mind, that didn’t seem likely. The ZaynAndLiam Entity – call it, thought Louis with happy inspiration, ‘Ziam’ – was clearly set for life. Which was ridiculous. These things didn’t _happen_ out of books. And if they did do.... Well. It left a bloke feeling the gooseberry, the third wheel, it did. And hoping Ziam were indeed too wrapt up in itself to remember some things.

 _Had_ Zaynie always been pining after Payno, and not even knowing it? He’d been much pursued, had Zaynie, and had rarely allowed himself to be caught, and it had never lasted long when he had done. As they’d got older, Zaynie’d been more inclined to manlier lads, the sort who are, depressingly, sought for as ‘straight-acting’; and Louis’d been more than half-inclined to see it as a reflection of his own self-closeting, although he’d wondered why a student at uni, a prospective teacher, felt that to be necessary in the way a football prospect did. He’d actually confronted Zaynie about it, terrified that his best mate was doing things he didn’t care to do simply so as to show solidarity with Louis, or to take away any guilt by association....

By then, though, Zaynie _had_ allowed himself to be caught, on those rare occasions when he did so allow, by pursuers who might have caught him in an actual pursuit. There was a rugger bugger lasted almost a fortnight; there were one or two footballers – uni types with no professional aspirations – for one or two dates (and nowt more or else); there was a rower (over whom Louis, for all his loyalties, had privily and guiltily salivated) who lasted a month, an Old Abingdonian whose entire _raison d’etre,_ and certainly whose whole reason for being up at Leeds of all unlikely places, was summed up in the phrase ‘Head of the River’ and who lived and breathed and eat and drank Henley. (That had ended badly, as Louis, who had witnessed it, even now winced to recall: Zaynie in a strop could be cutting, and had the learning for it, and Gerald _had_ been an old boy of not a bad public school after all, and their exchange of insults and accusations including ‘head _on_ the river’ and ‘coxless four _inches_ on a _good_ day’ had been simply frightful.)

The fact was, looking back, Zayn had come to prefer sporty sorts, although not thickies. Louis had – which was a very considerable part of just _why_ he was currently feigning sleep as they were passing through Coventry – Louis had even remarked on it at the time, contrasting it (and he might have _known_ it should come back to nip him in his most celebrated feature) with Zaynie’s preferences in the days when Zaynie had _just_ commenced to abandon tartany flannels and cavalry twill trousers for leather jackets, skinny jeans, combat boots, ink, and fags (the days, Louis carefully did not admit even to himself, when he himself, even he, The Tommo, had worn cherry cords and braces over matelot shirts and all sorts). He’d actually mentioned – _Christ,_ don’t let either of them remember it against him now – he had actually mentioned, fool that he’d been, Liam, as he was then, and expressing relief that Zaynie was no longer obsessed with ‘Bieber-coiffed twinks who belonged on the splash-page of a “barely legal” twink-porn pay-site’.

This was probably all his own fault, reflected Louis, bitterly. The Universe had decided to get Ziam together simply to pay him out in revenge.

Was it possible he could pretend to sleep all the way through Europe?

* * *

Yaser could do nothing save shake his head over his son’s tweets over the course of the past days. The boy was clever, but – he’d given himself hopelessly away.

 

> @zjmalik:  
>  Six years is too long to be without @Pukka_Payne
> 
> @zjmalik:  
>  Off to Europe with my mate @TomlinsonL and my man @Pukka_Payne !!
> 
> @zjmalik:  
>  Big love to @Pukka_Payne !! Smashing it, Liam !! #BestTripEver :D

* * *

Liam had – as Zayn intended to tell him for the rest of his life – been as wrong as wrong could be in saying ‘he wasn’t important enough’ to be made much of; it was however true that he was not yet famous enough, beyond his county or amongst dedicated followers of cricket, to be – just as yet – newsworthy or mobbed with public recognition. (With every tweet and every Instagram and every FB post, mind, that was ceasing rapidly to be the case.) Nor, as he and Zayn spoke in low and tender voices, were they making an obtrusive exhibition of themselves and their affections. It was clamantly evident all the same that young love was in the air, for all the properly British reticence of their behaviour, and their eschewal of offending public displays: and other passengers could not help but note it, and them, and Louis as well, if only because one rarely saw three such implausibly attractive young men abroad.

And one rarely saw any two people at all who were so stupefyingly in love.

All the same, they were left alone and at most smiled at covertly by other passengers who were very insistently _not_ staring at them, as they talked lovingly and exchanged fleeting, chaste touches suitable to a First Class carriage. (This was, after all, a _Virgin_ train....) And Louis had had the _nous_ or sense or charity to feign sleep; and the lads had much to say to one another.

‘You,’ said Liam, ‘were the first boy I ever kissed.’

‘You – well.’ Zayn ducked his head. ‘You weren’t the first boy _I_ ever kissed. But, then, happen you were. Three other lads had kissed _me_ before, but – you were the first _I kissed,_ I mean, the first one I initiated it and and took the lead and all, like.’

‘You were so confident.’

‘I was _so_ fronting it, babe. And bricking it, under it all. And I was so very gagging for you.’

‘But why be bricking it, love? You were gorgeous _then,_ too.’

‘Oh, babe.... ’M going to buy you a looking-glass.’

Liam grinned. ‘Oh, proper posh boy: us Non-U sorts calls that a _mirror._ ’

Zayn flicked his ear. ‘’M not posh, I’ve spent five years reading Victorian novels.’

‘This is like one, bay it. Melodrama and big sudden _luuuurve._ Can’t quite credit it meself.’ Liam paused, and swallowed. ‘You were why I came out, you know – to me friends and family and all, when we was sixteen. Now, hold on a bit, I didn’t say _for_ you – didn’t know as I’d ever see you again, or if you’d care if I did –’

‘ _Babe_ –’

‘– well, it were a kiss at a party where everyone were bladdered, I couldn’t even know if you really preferred lads, could I. But _because_ of you. I’d … well. Naught wrong with girls, I’d thought, or me equipment, but: I’d always wondered what the fuss were about. Oh, it were nice enough, but it didden rock me world. But one kiss with you.... _That_ were bostin’. So I knew.’

‘Did – did they take it well?’

‘Me friends, yeah, mostly – not that I had many, and them I had ’d already stood by me through wuss. Me family … well, I were the babby. Dad he thought it over and realised I could still give them a grandkid with their name, and that was fine after that, with Mum egging him on to be accepting. They surprise you, sometimes, families.’

Zayn smiled, reminiscently. ‘They do, yeah.’

Liam recognised all that was unspoken, and smiled back. _Good._

‘You’re not the last boy I kissed,’ said Zayn, abruptly.

‘No. Nor you. I’ve … I’ve slept with some lads meself since.’

‘So’ve I. They never lasted. I think.... I think I was comparing them, like. To the first lad I kissed because I wanted to, where _I_ started the ball. They never measured oop.’

‘I’m not at all like that lad now,’ argued Liam.

Zayn trawled an exquisitely slow, exquisitely appreciative look over him. ‘No,’ said he, positively purring. ‘Somehow, you improved on perfection.’

Liam blushed, lightly. ‘Buy _you_ a mirror,’ said he (at which Louis, feigning sleep, had all he could do not to blow his cover by laughing hysterically: Zaynie and reflective surfaces were already _far_ too well and intimately and all but romantically acquainted, you asked him...). ‘You’re all catwalk model and whipcord and shoulders and cheekbones and that unbelievable _face,_ love, and.’ Liam had been a plump infant who had made himself a lean runner before bulking into his present athleticism, and that sort of thing affects a man profoundly, not least with the conviction that the wheel can turn again all too readily. ‘ _I_ miss two day’s training, I’ll run to fat.’

Zayn shook his head. ‘Babe. ’S not true, and I wouldn’t care if it was. The muscles and all get me going, but. It’s _you,_ not your body – much as it makes me want you – it’s you, my _Leeyum,_ the smile and the sweetness and the drive and all that hasn’t changed in six years: that’s what I’m, well, in love with.’

‘I’d kiss you,’ said Liam, quietly, ‘except I’m not sure I could stop there. And I don’t want to give the whole train a show.’

 _Oh,_ Christ, _this is … if this keeps up,_ thought Louis, doing his best to keep his ‘sleeping’ breaths steady, _I’ll get off bloody train at Milton_ Fucking _Keynes, I will._

* * *

It kept up, to Louis’ horror. All the way to Watford.

‘... six years. Louis used to take the piss, how I liked ’em sporty now – but never harriers: big, strong lads who could give me a right seeing-to, and could take one in return – so I must be over that skinny, _shy_ lad from Wolvo I’d snogged once. But I wasn’t. I was growing up to be ready for the grown-up you, turns out.’

Liam gulped. ‘You. Um.’

Zayn leant in and combined a whisper even Louis could not overhear (and if The Tommo were actually asleep rather than gathering piss-taking material, considered Zayn, he’d _buy_ a hat and eat it) with delicate flicks of his tongue against the soon-burning shell of Liam’s _very_ nibble-able ear. (And smirked to himself as Liam all but melted with the heat.) ‘Babe.... I am _very_ secure in my masculinity, and not at all embarrassed by what I like. The things I want you to do to me – _Daddy_ –’

Liam bit down on a whimper.

‘– are _very_ naughty, sometimes. In fact, so naughty you probably want to _spank_ me.’

Liam whimpered.

‘And not only with your _hand,_ like.’

‘Oh, _God._ ’

‘And if you like, I’m just as eager to … _give_ … as good as I _get_. Do you like a little spice with your vanilla, Leeyum?’

Liam had not become a top-order batsman for Warwickshire by not meeting challenges. ‘As much spice as a Balti house can offer, love,’ said he, in low but audible reply.

Louis kept his eyes very firmly shut. He had a sinking feeling that if he opened them, he’d see _Zaynie’s_ eyes blown suddenly wide with lust … and that his might be as well, just _picturing_ it.

‘ _Well,_ ’ he could just hear Zayn say breathily. ‘We have a whole _rainbow_ of bandannas to buy, don’t we.’

* * *

The lads had come swiftly to a decision. Liam had sent a quick email – informing them, not asking permission (he played cricket, not football) – to Warks; and then changed his Facebook status, even as Zayn had been changing his with trembling hands: the tremors not of fear but of unbearable excitement.

 

> @Pukka_Payne:  
>  Official: after 6 years, found @zjmalik again, first lad I ever snogged. He’s agreed to be my BF!!!! GO ME!
> 
> @zjmalik:  
>  It’s true. Found my 1st love again: @Pukka_Payne. Never so happy in my life. Spare thoughts for what @TomlinsonL now has to put up with.
> 
> @Pukka_Payne:  
>  @zjmalik: I havent any thots to spare for Louis when your herrrre w/ me, love

Within five minutes, Twitter was going off like Bonfire Night, and Tumblrs for ‘Ziam’ – Louis was not the only one to seize upon portmanteaux – were springing up like mushrooms.

The ‘CricketingBears’ official account for Warks CCC was first off the mark, just pipping Liam’s team-mates at the post, with hearty congratulations. Trotters and Belly – and Chris Woakes – combined congratulation with piss-taking, naturally; the skipper sent best wishes; and Ateeq Javid wisely sent a DM, wishing them well and joking that, if the snaps told truth, Liam had found a boyfriend who must necessarily be good-looking … as he looked a bit like _him._ Zayn, more than Liam, was comforted as well as amused by this: his one reservation in announcing their relationship had been that Liam might catch it hot from some of Zayn’s own community in the cricketing world. Liam had told him he was not giving them enough credit; and Zayn was happy to see evidence that Liam had been right.

The messages continued to pour in – from Cooky and Broady and Jimmy, Finny and Moggie; from Brez and Joe Root and Jos Buttler – very little interspersed with the inevitable abuse. Blowers and Aggers chimed, supportively, in (Zayn was unfeignedly startled to receive a tweet from Blowers saying, ‘See here, my dear old thing, you and Liam must stop by for a snifter’), and Swanny had a right old time mixing congratulations with teasing Liam – for his youth (‘the infant is far too young to be thinking of walking out with a lad’). Davo was hugely supportive, of course; Freddie praised Liam to the skies and wished them both the very best. Zayn was stunned to find himself being followed by a vast number of cricketers, England and overseas, including Shoaib Malik, who made a discreet jest about their being, surely, cousins of some sort; he was taken wholly aback to find Amir Khan amongst his new followers.

Of course there was abuse. And some very salacious suggestions no stranger – indeed, no friend – had the least right to make. But these were small beer. Even Aussie and India and Saffer cricketers were giving Liam the thumbs-up, and introducing themselves to Zayn with every indication of apparent liking and kindness. (Old friends of them both and of Louis – Ant and Danny, Stan, Andy, and the rest – were over the moon, and said so. As was, and did, Zayn’s favourite aunt.) Trisha made her feelings clear on the matter as well; and, having tweeted simply that it was a good thing _someone_ sensible – namely, Liam – was joining this mad jaunt to the Continent, to keep Zayn and Louis out of trouble (which Jay retweeted with emphasis), Yaser, always cricket-mad and very much a walking _Wisden,_ descended into a series of highly informed tweets about cricket, with a clear, proud overtone of ‘my son-in-law the cricketer’ to them.

 

> @RooWV11:  
>  Well done, @Pukka_Payne. Mum’s dissolved in happy tears, little brother. @Kanga_Payne: Happy now mum?

* * *

‘“Wake up”, Tommo,’ said a very sceptical and sarcastic voice: one with perfectly audible inverted commas to it: a Bradford-bred voice with which Louis was all too familiar. ‘We’re running in to London now.’

‘You lads have a nice natter, then?’ Louis, faking a yawn and a stretch, was skilled in playing out an impossible position.

‘We did,’ said Liam indulgently, his eyes crinkling. ‘Turns out we’ve spent six years preparing for one another. Fate, I’d call it.’

‘Kismet?’ One of the things which most bedevilled Louis in closeting himself was his open, indeed inconcealable, love of the musical theatre, from _Grease_ to _Gay’s the Word._

Zayn gave him an acid look all the same, for reasons his remarks swiftly made obvious. ‘ _Taqdir._ An issue of _qadar._ But you won’t know about that.’

Liam squeezed his hand, irenically. ‘Call it what you like,’ said he, ‘I found the first lad I ever kissed, again, after six years, and after a few kisses in between as never rivalled it. As far as I’m concerned, the other day on the tow path … I’m glad my first kiss was the same as – as my _last_ first kiss. It _is_ Fate, can’t be naught else, we’ve found each other again, and I don’t think six years is rushing it, anyroadup.’

Zayn, all smiles, dropped his head on Liam’s shoulder and closed his eyes, as Louis grumbled, ‘Mate, you’re as bad as _he_ is, he said same bloody thing.’

* * *

 

> @TomlinsonL:  
>  Going to be a loooong trip, this  
>  Soppy lads, @zjmalik & @Pukka_Payne  
>  I want a drink to put up with this

* * *

It was typical of Liam that their arrival at St Pancras (hopping on the Victoria Line from Euston) should leave them to arrive ‘in good time’ for their Eurostar departure: for which, read, ‘with a few hours to spare’. (Of course, anything else, the train schedules being what they were, should have cut it far too fine.) It was, perhaps, as well. Zayn had never been out of the UK before, had not, before he and Louis had embarked on this gap year, even held a passport, and he was, although he did his best not to show it, a trifle nervous. For which, read, ‘terrified’. Easing him into the realisation that he was indeed about to go through customs and Schengen immigration controls and depart for countries new, was not a bad idea, actually.

Louis did his part to distract him, by sledging him for his declaration that he was giving up smoking. (Liam, when he heard this, glowed, with hope and pleasure and a certain awe at the thought that Zayn should do that for _him._ ) Naturally, The Tommo being The Tommo, the barracking Zayn got was as near the knuckle as damn it, dwelling on oral fixations and the want of giving ‘poor Zaynie’ something to do with his mouth and his hands when the craving for a fag was too much to bear. (Liam being Liam, a low, slow whisper in Zayn’s ear thereupon intervened, full of Useful Suggestions that left Zayn hard enough to cut diamonds – and wholly uninterested in tobacco.)

Louis cackled. ‘To think that in six years, our sensible Payno’s been corrupted! I _like_ it!’

Zayn ran slightly tremulous fingers through Liam’s hair as Liam ducked his head, shyly. This combination of shyness and rampant sexuality was, conceded Zayn, going to be the death of him. ‘He’s a _naughty_ boy,’ said Zayn, breathlessly.

The three lads wandered the station for a bit, ducking into shops – ‘Boots! God knows if they’ve Lemsip on the Continent!’, and Fortnum’s for canisters of tea, and M&S and John Lewis in hopes of finding (Liam didn’t say so, but his special hope was finding _for Zayn_ ) some scarf or cap that should tell foreigners at five hundred yards that they were _British,_ damn it all (in the end, they found caps bearing the Union flag at Fat Face) – and losing Zayn for a good three quarters of an hour in Hatchards (‘you buy any more bloody _books,_ mate,’ whinged Louis, ‘you’ll be forced to leave all your hair product behind’: upon which Liam had volunteered to purchase, and carry, another bag for Zayn, which caused Louis to roll his eyes to the point of possible damage. These two really were, thought Louis, ridiculously besotted).

They spotted, once or twice, two lads of about their own ages, clearly bent on a similar gap year and dwarfed by their backpacks: a fair and laughing lad, who could be heard a mile away, Irish as stout and stoutly Irish, with improbable blond hair and a guitar on his back, and his companion, an infant Jagger with the gait of a newborn fawn – and the air of a young and rutting _faun._ Louis’ gaze developed a marked tendency to slip back to the two youths, and the Laughing Faun most of all. Fortunately, Ziam (as he thought, unwisely enough) appeared to be too wrapped up in its collective self to notice.

All five young men were themselves observed, keenly and indulgently, in a fashion that appeared so casual as hardly to be surreptitious, by one man in particular, a spare, ginger, rather military gentleman in bespoke tweeds, whose tie was striped in what could only be called the colours of eggs and bacon, and the shortest form of whose personal name was ‘Robin Adair’. His fuller designation took up extra space on his passport and included a line stating ‘Holder is also known as...’; and that passport was not the same sort of passport as that possessed of the lads.

After noting the young men carefully, he wandered idly over towards the station taken up by HM Customs, and, after a brief conversation, sat down, apparently to await an answer to certain questions. That answer appeared to come with considerable and rather surprising celerity; after which, he wandered about for a time, conversing quietly upon what looked to the untrained and casual eye rather a nondescript mobile phone.

What time Zayn was at last dragged, protesting, out of Hatchards (the subtly watching gentleman had suppressed an approving smile), Robin Adair – as he was _not_ commonly called – had had a lengthy conversation with the senior-most officer present of the DCPAF, the French Frontier Police. Had anyone been able to overhear that conversation, which was wholly in French, they might perhaps have wondered that the British-officer-in-mufti took such an interest in five young men evidently largely unknown to him.

All the same, the French immigration officer – acting on behalf of his own agency and the Belgians – protested not all, and was commendably prompt in communicating with his Customs counterparts, _les douanes,_ at Lille.

Satisfied, and not without a natural pleasure in the irony of it, the tweedy gentleman betook himself to the Betjeman Arms for a pint and a ploughman’s. (The irony, as only he knew of all those thronging the station that day, was that quite the grandest of his cousins, himself a complete railway anorak, was one of the late Sir John’s godsons.)

Some ten minutes after, The Tommo was complaining, loudly, that he was starved. A French chap in uniform, who happened to be passing by, coincidentally, and who, coincidentally, happened to overhear, begged their pardon for his intrusion and suggested that perhaps M’sieur might do well to step into the Betjeman Arms, as it was the last pub before Europe, and worth, perhaps, the visit as a celebratory occasion, and was not, he hoped, too dear: the prices were not, one considered, exigent....

Having been on short commons before running into Liam, Zayn and Louis were nothing loath to follow the kindly advice, and Liam, who intended to pay the scot over their protests in any case, was more than ready to do so. And so they ascended to the Upper Level, Louis catching a glimpse of the Laughing Faun on the way....

* * *

Happy and pinkly glowing with a good feed and good ale, the lads were ready to settle the bill and go to the Departure Lounge at last, and tackle Immigration’s various mazes: whereupon they were informed that their bill had been settled for them by a gentleman.

Louis raised an eyebrow, eloquently, with a clear suggestion in it.

‘Oh, no, sir, I shouldn’t think anything of it. Or – not what I expect you’re thinking, sir. Of course there’s the occasional gentlemen is too free with offers of drinks for young persons of whatever sort and sex the gentleman happens to fancy, but I make _quite_ certain that’s not the case. You see, I saw the gentleman’s tie, and I myself recognised Mr Payne, here.’

Liam smiled through his bewilderment. ‘His – tie?’

‘Yes, Mr Payne. And I’m quite sure that was all there was too it. The gentleman wore an MCC tie, and clearly recognised you: in fact, he said as much, that “Mr Payne’s party” was not to pay, and he’d settle for you.’

It was Zayn’s turn to look bewildered (his father and uncles and several aunts should have sighed, loudly). Liam hastened to explain without seeming to do so. ‘Oh! One of the old gentlemen one finds in the Long Room at Lord’s, no doubt’ – at which Zayn, with an embarrassing sense of his own nescience, twigged at once.

‘No doubt, Mr Payne, and I quite agree with him: it’s a joy to watch you bat, sir, and I hope you’ll be capped for England soon.’

Zayn embarked immediately upon a silent review of everything he knew of cricket, and resolved to use as many cricket metaphors in speaking to Liam as he could manage to do. He was determined upon showing that he cared and took an interest and was a fit and proper person to be Liam’s not-too-distantly future husband.

* * *

‘I cannot,’ said Louis, as they queued up for Border Controls, ‘ _believe_ you had to give autographs down the pub, Payno.’

‘You’ll be doing the same soon enough, Tommo,’ said Liam, irenically.

Louis brightened. ‘Oi. I _shall_ be, shan’t I. That’s a _looovely_ thought, that is.’

Zayn simply shook his head.

* * *

Duly ensconced aboard the Eurostar, in what amounts on that train to First, Zayn was disposed to be content – and relieved.

The contentment was attributable to a comfortable seat, his best friend nearby, and Liam at his side; and a carriage which contained other voyagers who appeared to be decent, quiet sorts, from the foxy-whiskered gentleman in tweeds several seats forwards to the youths they’d seen at St Pancras, the leprechaun and the faun, just behind the tweedy gentleman, and at whom The Tommo was stealing looks.

The relief was that of the first-time traveller who had found the experience much less unnerving than he had been told and had feared. ‘Dunno why I was worried, like. Border Control’s not as bad as I’d heard: they put us through as easy as kiss your hand.’

‘Yes,’ said Liam, thoughtfully. ‘It was.’ This was _not_ his first trip abroad.

Zayn looked at him, sharply. ‘Was it odd?’

‘I don’t think so. Why? I mean.... This isn’t just first-time jitters, is it.’

‘You know who and what I am, Leeyum. It. Sometimes it matters to people.’ He and Liam alike resolutely refused to think about the abuse on Twitter, swamped though it might be by the support.

Liam drew him closer in to his side, to cuddle. ‘When you’re ready? It’s been six years, love. I think. I think we both need to know all the hurts the other’s suffered and all. For healing.’

Zayn nuzzled at Liam’s neck. ‘Yeah. We can be strong for each other, like.’

The Tommo mimed spasms of nausea.

* * *

As the last of the Kentish countryside flew past and they approached the Tunnel, an attendant brought them a card. The reverse, which was presented to them, bore a brief message: _I shd like to have a few words, gentlemen, at your convenience,_ and was signed, _MAYNOOTH._ The obverse bore two symbols, the first of which was readily recognisable and the second clearly a military badge, and the name,

Brigadier the Earl of Maynooth KCB CVO OBE MC MiD  
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe.

All three of the lads exchanged a glance of sheer stupefaction, and then raised their heads to look ’round the carriage. The ginger gentleman in tweeds and an MCC tie smiled, and nodded.

* * *

‘Gentlemen. Thank you for granting me this. Mr Payne, I know very well who _you_ are. I was at Edgbaston in September, you know, for the County match against Northants. Sixty off a dozen balls: remarkable display, and of a whole with that entire third-wicket stand. Most commendable. Mr Tomlinson, I understand you are looking to be signed by Leeds United. And Mr Malik. The scholar, who shall, I rather think, go far.

‘You’ll have noticed, I take it, that your way was rather by way of being smoothed at St Pancras – and I trust you enjoyed your luncheon. I think you’ll find your way smoothed all across the Continent. We cannot have future internationals, and particularly, if Mr Tomlinson forgives my preferences, future England batsmen, unduly harassed by our, ah, allies and … European _partners._ ’ The noble Brigadier’s tone suggested he was a member in good standing of Better Off Out. ‘And we certainly cannot have scholars of great potential – and the, hm, Special Friend of a future England cricketer at that – exposed to indignity simply because the Continentals have _no_ sense of community integration. Yes, Mr Malik: I’m afraid that, for various reasons, the French especially are a trifle nervous just now. Well, they’ve insisted, all the Continentals, on bringing people in to do the dirty jobs, and leaving them second-class citizens, segregated away in the name of “multiculturalism”: even the Yanks, bless their little cotton socks, might have told them _that_ was a hiding to nothing, bloody “separate but equal”, really. It’s no proper business of mine – I am certainly not acting in any official capacity – but, really, if an MCC member cannot look after a first-class cricketer and party, what is the world coming to? You’ll find that HMDS are looking out for your interests with special attention, and our EU … colleagues … are aware that you are in a sense my protégés. As are the other infant celebrities on the train. You’ll have noticed them, surely: the Bocuse-trained chef – good lad, from somewhere in Cheshire – and the Irish minstrel, who I hope shall never to the wars be forced to go. In any event, you’ll have a kindly eye kept on you. If you happen to pass by Casteau at all, do ring me up; and do keep me abreast of your travels in any case, won’t you? Particularly as to where you may be on 12 January if you’re yet abroad: I think you’ll find that to your advantage.’

* * *

‘I’m not altogether sure,’ said Zayn, slowly, ‘I quite like that.’ It was specially unnerving that the Brigadier knew Zayn’s birthday, although, really, with any sort of social media presence, these things were readily determined nowadays.

They were well into the Tunnel now; and perhaps it was as well that Zayn was distracted from that fact. Had he had time to dwell upon being underground beneath the immensity of salt water that was the Channel, he should likely have been curled into a ball and whimpering. Phobias are by nature irrational, and unman the strongest souls.

Louis shrugged. ‘It’s not as if we’ve been asked to _do_ anything, or been recruited to anything, mate. If anything, it’s extra protection, innit.’

‘With an eye kept on us?’

‘Oh, dry up, Zaynie, it’s not as if you’ll be under surveillance – God help them if they did, they’d get an eyeful every time Payno offered you an orgasm as a substitute for a smoke –’

Zayn glared.

‘I don’t think,’ said Liam, pouring oil on the roiled waters as he always did, ‘it’s anything to do with – well, anything. I mean. The old chaps in the Pavilion – and even the middle-aged ones. I mean, look here. I don’t, I don’t know, _rejoice_ in it or that, but, I am, well, something of – I suppose something of –’

‘A sleb,’ said Louis, impatiently. ‘Comes with the job. And, Zaynie, you marry the man, you marry the job.’

Zayn squirmed, a little, trying not to do. The idea of being a celebrity even by reflection was gall to him, introvert as he was: the rush of being Twitter-famous notwithstanding: although he’d pay any price for Liam

‘Well. I s’pose,’ sighed Liam. ‘It’s part of the price.’ Zayn managed, just, not to startle at this uncanny echo. ‘But, I get to play, and I get the dosh – not footballer’s dosh, but it’s a sight better’n wages down the factory – and all. So. And the old chaps in the Pavilion in their MCC ties are part of the price as well, with their paternal interest and their funny ways and their views on Europe and all.’

‘Mm.’ Zayn relaxed, just a trifle, into Liam. ‘He didn’t cut up rough about … us. Clearly knew –’

‘Oh, Zaynie,’ said Louis, quite fondly, ‘ _everyone_ can tell, whole bloody _train_ knows. _And_ you tweeted it.’

‘– and didn’t seem to be fussed.’ Zayn had not, actually, realised, when he and Liam had agreed to tweet their new relationship, just how different Liam’s Twitter presence was to his own, and how many people followed Liam.

‘Love, he’s a member of the peerage, of course he doesn’t so much as blink. Admittedly, it’s the _Irish_ peerage, but –’

‘Speaking of,’ said Louis, ‘we want to get to know those lads.’

Zayn and Liam carefully did not exchange a look. There was no want.

* * *

‘Good morning, Mrs Malik.’ Mrs Yeadon, the wife of Zayn’s old headmaster, was a stately woman, very conscious of her position: not as the headmaster’s wife, but as representing the Oldest of Old Bradford, being married to a Yeadon and having been born an Ackroyd. In utterance, she tended towards the Johnsonian, and she was possessed of the plummy port and dignity (and the requisite avoirdupois) to bear that character.

Zayn’s mum had hoped to escape the shop without encountering Emmeline Yeadon: she rather liked the old girl, but she _was_ always good for detaining one for a good half of the hour when one was in a rush. ‘Good morning, Mrs Yeadon.’

Emmeline inclined her head, regally, rather in the fashion of the late Queen Mum. ‘Anthony –’ that being the headmaster’s Christian name – ‘had rather an interesting encounter yesterday, which I think you, as dear Zayn’s mother, may be interested to know of.’

For this, Trisha could spare half the forenoon.

‘Perhaps,’ said Emmeline Yeadon, ‘we might adjourn to the teashop before we broach the subject – which, as I need hardly tell you, is very much to your son’s credit. Oh: and I understand congratulations are in order as well?’

* * *

Ch Supt O’Flaherty – or, he being insistent upon the Gaelic, _Príomh-Cheannfort_ Ó Flaithbheartaigh – of the _Garda_ looked up from the desk he’d commandeered, out across College Street, and contemplated for a moment the great bulk of the Cathedral in the shadow of which the _Gardai_ had their station.

There had been nothing to tell the CSU, SDU, and NSU – let alone G2, who were no doubt behind the requests (and what for, he wondered, were they prying into the life of a minstrel lad, but? It was daft) –: the lad was cleaner nor a penny-whistle. Task done, he rose to take his leave, closing the Horan file as he stood.

* * *

Liam was torn. What he felt it wisest to do was to walk once more to where their new acquaintance was sitting and seek advice (not least on where to eat and what to see in Lille and elsewhere: Brigadier Lord Maynooth was clearly a man of the world) so that he could treat Zayn, as he deserved, to a slap-up meal three times a day and otherwise swaddle him in luxury. What he _wished_ to do was to cuddle Zayn as much as the travelling public might bear. What he felt obliged to do, though, was to distract Zayn as much as possible from what he had already learnt – had learnt not least because The Tommo had taken him aside for a quick word at St Pancras whilst Zayn had been transfixed in rapture in Hatchards – were the two of Zayn’s phobias which were at the moment the most pertinent, in a train beneath the Channel: large bodies of water and being underground.

Being Liam, he put his preferences to one side and did his duty as he saw it.

‘I never understood Shakespeare and that, meself. Of course, I’m not clever like you.’ He cut off Zayn’s immediate protest before it could blossom into a panegyric on the wonders of Liam Payne, not excluding his far too great humility. ‘All that –’ he made his best stab at a RADA accent – ‘“to be or not to be” and all.’

Zayn, as Liam had hoped, became animated at once. ‘Of course you understand it, _really,_ babe: you _live_ it, doing what you do. You just don’t recognise it in the play, because no one acts or stages or speaks it the way they ought to do. They’ve done it for too many auditions, I reckon, until it’s lost all meaning for them: they just mouth it for sound and rhythm. But Hamlet’s not some emo-turned-hipster whinging about whether it’s better to live or to die, like a fooking _Twilight_ vampire. He may be a hipster, but he’s a prince – by rights, _he’s_ the king, since his father was murdered: like Prince Caspian, babe. What’s he deciding? To _be_ – that’s the word they want to _punch_ – to endure, to Keep Buggering On, to, y’ know, to defend the wicket –’

Louis made a show of tuning this out. He could listen as avidly as was Payno listening whilst he pretended boredom; and he could go on observing the Laughing Faun and his – mate? Lover? – his _travelling companion,_ the Irish _Sidhe,_ and wonder how could they get to know them.

‘– or _not to_ – there’s the punch _there_ – _not_ merely to _be:_ not simply giving the wicket away, but trying to drive, going for a risky boundary even at the cost of the wicket. _That’s_ the question: go on bearing up under all the shit he’s being pelted with – bad luck that’s simply outrageous, being undervalued, petty jobsworths from the Council, NHS wait-times, he has a whole list: “the insolence of office” and “the law’s delay” and that, yeah? – or go out in a blaze of glory: “take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them”: win or lose, it’ll end the problem … or end him, like.’

Zayn was not speaking loudly by any means, but intelligent people sitting near were beginning to listen all the same, nodding in approval or rapt by a new interest and a new insight: including, Louis noted without seeming to do, the Fair Folk’s local representative and the Laughing Faun.

‘And what’s his criterion? His _cred,_ babe, ’s what. Which course is _nobler?_ Which gives him more of a character for having a noble mind, like the prince he is?

‘But – here’s the rub – if he does decide to take his chances, and risk getting out, go big or go home – well, go for a boundary or go back to the Pavilion – what then? If he tries a drive and is caught.... It’d be one thing to be bowled, and be out. But if he gets back to the Pavilion and must watch the rest of the second innings, and it turns out his side lose by that wicket or by one run or summat, and he’s kicking himself and the captain’s giving him a right bollocking.... That’s what “gives him pause”, babe. “ _Thus_ conscience does make cowards of us all”.’

Liam nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Oh. Well. Unless he’s KP, yeah: that makes sense.’

Louis was not about to make any comments about Kevin Pietersen. Or how, whenever he was in a slump, Chef turned into Hamlet at the crease.

He did not observe the MCC-born grin that shone on the Brigadier’s face as he ear-wigged in from several seats away: no Pietersen supporter, the Brigadier (‘man’s the second coming of bloody _Boycott,_ damn it all’).

 

* * *

They arrived at Lille bang on time: _tea_ time, to be precise (if the benighted barbarians of the Continent had _had_ proper teatimes, as alas they do not), one hour and twenty-two minutes after departing St Pancras; and Louis, Zayn, and Liam, like the Brigadier, and like the Minstrel Lad and his Faun-y friend, passed the inspection of the _douanes_ at Lille Customs with such ease – and in the lads’ case, such expressions of kindly welcome, worryingly _by name_ (was this _normal?_ ) – as to make Zayn suspicious, if not nervous, anew.

The Brigadier – trust Louis to make a joke about their all buying him a drink in return for his interest: five rounds, rapid – had turned to depart for his Northbound connection, after a word with the Faun and the _Sidhe,_ when Liam politely stopped him, with the request that he please tell them the best place at which to dine.

‘Oh, it’s not me you want to ask.’ He nodded in the Faun’s direction. ‘This one’s your oracle. I’ll let the five of you make your own introductions. And do remember, please – liberty though it is in your case,’ said he to the Irishman – ‘to keep me apprised of your travels and to let me know if there should be any spot of trouble.’

He paused, consideringly. ‘In fact. Mobiles are right out –’ a point he did not elaborate – ‘but if Mr Payne is happy to exchange email addresses with me, and share it with you four, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You drop me the occasional line, and if I have any advice for travellers, I’ll send it on.

‘Oh. And – a word to the wise – if you must tweet on this jaunt, don’t make a habit of revealing your precise whereabouts. No, Mr Malik, I’m not warning against kidnappers or assassins or some damned thing: I think you’ll find the paps are _much_ worse.’

This being swiftly agreed, he strode away, to catch his train.

‘Well,’ said the smiling scion of the Emerald Isle. ‘I’m none so fond of the Ascendancy, but that one goes back a deal further: as the Feythers said when I was at school, the Old English – the Cambro- and Hiberno-Normans – were _Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis,_ more Irish than we Irish ourselves.’

Louis noted, with some despair, how the Laughing Faun hung, with blatant affection and an adoring look, on every word the leprechaun said.

‘And sure the Maynooths _are_ Irish as well, FitzDermots and Athys and Fitzgarrets and Butlers and Conollys and all. A man to trust, I think, and I’ll do as he says. M’ name it is Niall, Niall Horan, and I know at least who “Mr Payne” is, sure, although I’d like him the better and he, playin’ for Derbyshire.’

Louis and Zayn exchanged a swift glance. Zayn just managed not to gawp; Louis simply stared, slack-jawed.

‘But. But you’re _famous,_ ’ said Louis.

‘Am I now? And it’s Liam Payne you’re travellin’ with, did y’ know it? And it’s yourself is famous also now, and overnight.’

Zayn gathered himself. ‘Yeah. And Louis here’ll be famous in his time – he’s to sign with Leeds United –’

Niall grinned, blindingly. ‘Are ye, now, mate? I’m a Rams supporter meself, am I not. But it’s yourself as wants to get used to being famous, then, and – I tell y’ a secret – when y’ are, y’ find yourself in the company of other famous folk as often as not.’

‘I didn’t expect,’ said Louis, with recovering sharpness, ‘to find myself on a platform in a station in Flanders with Ireland’s answer to Ed Sheeran, all the same. Why – why do you –’

‘Keep t’ t’e background?’ Eyes dancing merrily, Niall Horan was evidently now bent on being as Irish – to positively Plastic Paddy levels – as all the swine of St Patrick, even to laying the accent on with a trowel. ‘And if it was in a band I was, I mightn’t, but. What it is, t’ere’s two t’ings I’m allergic to: small spaces and large crowds. I’ll write for anybody and everybody, I’ll record stujjio albyums, but, bein’ solo, I’ll not tour in support and t’at’s t’e trut’. If it means I’m not recognised and mobbed when I’m in public, so much t’e better.’

The Laughing Faun coughed. ‘Nialler.... Bin the stage-“Oirish” turn, love.’

Niall’s grin was wholly unrepentant; but Zayn and Louis at least marked immediately that Niall did as instructed, forthwith. ‘Ah, and here I am not telling you: this is Harry.’

‘’Lo,’ said the Laughing Faun: “Harry”, apparently. His voice was smoky, slow, and husky, like a mixture of honey and whisky drizzling slowly into bran. ‘Harry Styles. Hi.’

Liam shook his hand, and Niall’s, and made the formal introductions: Louis’ with fond familiarity enough, and Zayn’s with loving affection that might have been remarked from space, and established to anyone within earshot just what Liam and Zayn meant to one another. Niall and Harry exchanged a glance and a grin which made Zayn blush and Louis immediately abandon all hopes of making any closer acquaintance with the Laughing – that is to say, with Harry, who was evidently Off Limits.

Manfully, he soldiered on. ‘So where are you bound?’

‘Oh and I don’t know,’ grinned Niall. ‘I have not yet my hat tossed in the air to see which road it is it lands in.’

Liam gave way to honest puzzlement. It was – recognised Zayn, with a fondness which stole his breath from him – simply incomprehensible to Liam that anyone could be abroad – in both senses – without a plan, a schedule, bookings, and a timetable. ‘You’re just – wandering?’

‘There’s always a place to busk,’ said Niall, cheerfully. ‘And Hazza’s always in demand.’

Louis repressed the thoughts which came forthwith and unbidden into his mind.

‘I cook,’ said Harry, shuffling his absurdly large feet in his ridiculous and ridiculously well-worn winklepicker boots. Louis suddenly remembered the Brigadier’s very plain hints: ‘the Bocuse-trained chef’, and, ‘this one’s your oracle’ for where to dine.

‘Oh! Oops, then? I suppose we ought really to call you, “Chef”!’

Liam snorted; and Niall laughed, nodding back at Liam, and saying, ‘Ah, there, our own generation’s Freddie Flintoff has already someone to call _that,_ and it’s a long time ye’d be looking at Hazza before y’ thought of Alastair Cook, sure.’

Louis sniggered. ‘All right, then: “Oracle”. So where do we eat?’

Harry brightened. ‘Well....’

* * *

The red-tops were making a meal of Liam’s having acquired a boyfriend (and, being the red-tops, of who and of what background that boyfriend was). One had thought Liam had not come out quietly and with little fanfare years before.

The serious newspapers, and CricInfo, and _Wisden,_ simply noted it in passing, with polite and disinterested congratulations and approbation, taking their lead from Aggers’ regular analysis at the Beeb. What seemed to garner mention, after the review of Liam’s career, prospects, and statistics, was simply that Zayn, to the cricketing press, rather resembled Mohammed Amir.

* * *

By the end of the meal (which Harry ordered and directed, in a little estaminet he knew of – the chef-proprietor being apparently an old friend, who had greeted him effusively – an estaminet tucked away in a XVIth Century courtyard: chicken waterzooi for Zayn, carbonade flamande for Liam, moules-frites _and_ stoemp with bangers for Niall – who filched chips from them all to supplement his own –, _pêches au thon_ for Harry himself, and for Louis, at Harry’s insistence, sharing also a dish of _chicons au gratin_ with Harry _,_ a potjevleesch unique to the establishment), the five were fast friends, and it was simply assumed that they should travel together.

Liam and Niall engaged in a polite prospective tussle over the reckoning, the bill, cut short only by Harry’s slow, mild interjection to the effect that his friend the proprietor wasn’t, actually, submitting one, as he and Harry always took these things out in trade (Louis adamantly refused to allow his mind to go there). Niall laughed, and cuddled Harry close, dropping a kiss onto those wild, Brian May curls (Louis adamantly refused to observe _that_ and its implications, either).

Giggling, Harry shoved Niall away; to which Niall grinned, and went on as if there’d been no interruption, ‘All right, _this_ time, _but,_ me Payno, I’m at the least payin’ for the gargle every round, no refusals, unless we hit a town that has no taste in music or won’t let a lad busk.

He paused, and threw back his head and laughed. ‘Jaysus,’ said he, ‘what I’ve l’arnt, buskin’.... All musicians want to be forced t’ busk anonymously for three months in the year.’

It was impossible to resent Niall. Louis found himself grinning, sharp-edged, and asking, with bright eyes, for anecdotes.

‘Oh, and there’ll be time enough for those,’ said Niall. ‘Tonight I’m telling this much. The most shite I get? When I’m “coverin’” – _badly,_ accordin’ t’ the wee man-een’s rabid fans, and it’s a disgrace I am to Mother Ireland and an insult t’ the original artist – songs by that Niall Horan fella. What else? _He’s_ a great, mysterious talent, so he is, who gives his hits to other artists and then puts out a stu-di-o CD of his own without revealin’ himself, and storms the charts wit’ it, he does, he’s the phantom o’ the op’ry house o’ Mullingar, he is, and no buskin’ fella is fit t’ cover his genius....’

Louis was laughing so hard the _bière de garde_ came out through his nose. Which, with an AOC beer with am 8.5 per cent. ABV, is never actually pleasant, though it broke Harry down into gales of laughter even as he solicitously helped Louis clean himself, and petted him. (Louis, already suffering equal pangs of pain, humiliation, and amusement, adamantly refused to think upon _that_ fact.)

As they left at last, after pudding and drinks (Harry had gone mad with the choices for afters), the dining life of Lille appeared to be only just picking up. Zayn shook his head. ‘Where are you put up,’ he asked Harry and Niall. Harry, to Louis’ mingled admiration and despair, had an arm around Niall’s shoulders and the other interlaced with Louis’ – and Louis had somehow acquired Harry’s ridiculous hat as well.

‘Chrisht, we haven’t thought about it,’ said Niall, carelessly. ‘If we must, we can find someone who’ll let us take up a sofa, or there’ll be a hostel, or –’ his grin became dangerous – ‘there’s always pullin’.’

Louis stopped stock-still, causing Harry and thus Niall to pull up, and went what Zayn had grown up calling ‘pindrop-silent’. ‘But. I thought – no, no, never mind, sorry, no business of mine.’

‘No, it is, you’re our mate now y’ are, sure. What is it, then?’

‘It’s really no business of mine.’ Louis did his best to sound casual and warm, and failed catastrophically on both counts.

With evident and telegraphic Dawning Realisation, Niall and Harry exchanged a glance.

‘Ah, now,’ said Niall, ‘and are you thinking, my Louis, that Harry and me is t’ _gether,_ are we?’

The Tommo simply gibbered silently for a moment. When he got his voice, he was gibbering all the same. ‘You. But. It’s like Payno and Zaynie, except more married-like and not as new, the touches and the teases and. Oh, _shit_.’

Harry giggled, then clapped an absurdly large hand over his mouth and tried to look as solemn as he was clearly sympathetic.

Niall spoke softly, and gently, as to a frightened child or panicky animal. ‘We’re not together, at all, at all. Oh, _Harry’s_ pan, he’d have no objection – and who would? It’s _me,_ there’s no one doesn’t want a piece of this,’ laughed Niall, mocking himself as he struck ridiculous poses that brought a grin even to Louis’s stricken face. ‘But – although the wardrobe’d make you to wonder, it would – he hasn’t the tits or the bits I’m after pursuing. He has not. We’re – Jaysus, you’re not telling me there’s not been folks assumed you and Male-Model-Malik weren’t a couple –’

Guiltily, Liam coughed. ‘When I first met them, six years gone. I thought they were, and then I wondered about you, Lou, and Stan, and Zayn and Danny and Zayn and Ant –’

Zayn winced in distaste.

‘– and then I knew better, but only once Zayn kissed me.’

Harry – literally and without a trace of self-consciousness – cooed, actually _cooed_.

‘Well, then,’ said Niall. ‘That’s us whatever: friends and brothers. And, faith, but it’s had its advantages,’ added he, with a grin that went so far past filthiness, let alone salacity, as to establish its own category of obscenity. ‘The number o’ lads and lasses have wanted t’ seduce one or t’ other of us away from our “lover” is chronic, it is, and as for the number o’ lasses have wanted to have us _both_....’

Louis’ eyes were rather glassy and his expression had done credit to a stunned ox. Adamant though he had tried to be, there comes a point at which a man’s mind, for all his willpower, _does_ go there.

Harry gave a little wave. ‘“Pan”, remember?’

Zayn, for his part, simply pinched the bridge of his nose and forbore to say all the things he was thinking about Pan and _panisci_ and fauns and satyrs, as Liam hastened to massage his shoulders and the back of his neck. ‘My head is paining,’ sighed he; to which Liam, all solicitude, whispered Black Country endearments and Yam-Yam soothings in his ear.

‘Um.’ Harry was hesitant, but determined. ‘I. Um. Is this a thing? Or. I mean. Is it because we’re all uncomfortable – no, put a sock in it, Nialler, you know it’s why _you_ do, it’s when you’re hiding behind a mask again – is it because we’re all uncomfortable that Niall’s doing his stage Irishman turn _again,_ and Louis’ voice is suddenly wearing a flat ’at and has a whippet on a lead, and Liam’s Wolverhamping about, and, well –’

‘I’m sounding like an extra in _Citizen Khan_?’ Zayn half-smiled, ruefully.

‘Er. Yah?’

‘Mate, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know about you lot, and why. If you say it’s what Niall does when he’s doing the smoke and mirrors, then I’ll credit that. I _know_ The Tommo is bricking it, but – you want to ask him if you wish to know why.’

Louis shot Zayn a look of positively operatic betrayal which had not been out of place at Glyndebourne. Or La Scala.

‘But, yeah, the Yorkshire stereotype? That’s a sign he’s on edge, like. And. Leeyum.... Are you babying me – or _“babbying”_ me – babe?’

Liam blushed and hung his head, although there was the hint of a smile on his lips. (Harry suppressed a coo.)

‘ _Leeyum,_ I’m elder to you – damn it, I’m doing it again, I sound like an _uncle_.’

Harry simply looked at Zayn with concern, and then swept all four of his mates into a group hug. (Zayn had the inconsequent thought that he was glad they were in French Flanders just then, as Harry was, surely, the sort of person who’d do something thus un-British even in Britain.) ‘’M sorry we’ve made you three uneasy – and sorry, Nialler, I’ve made you uneasy.’

Gently disengaging so as to have Zayn all to himself (well, damn it all, if hugging in the street – cutherin’ in the ’oss-road – were to be involved, he had _no_ intention of sharing), Liam said, equally gently, ‘It’s not your fault, Haz. When.... When I first met these lads, it’s how we used to spake, and I rackon that’s part of it. We go back to that when we’re bawked or in a tiswas. Eh, _I’m_ doin’ it now. It’s the why as werrits me.’

‘Well,’ said Louis, brusquely, ‘speaking for myself, I’ve made every sort of fool of meself, I’m _still_ the gooseberry on this trip, I don’t feel I’m pulling my weight, and – Flemish great-great-gran or no Belgian great-great-gran – I’m fooking nervous here abroad for starters, and a fook’s sight more after having the MoD and, I’d wager, the intelligence services suddenly take an interest in my gap year.’

‘ _Yes,_ ’ said Zayn. ‘I mean, all right, happen part of it’s that Liam and I regress to when we first kissed – if you bloody _coo_ again, Styles, I’ll throttle you –’

Harry grinned back, and fluttered his lashes.

‘– and part of it is … I’m not good with people, _new_ people, and this is the first time, too, I’ve ever been out of England, I grew up with half the family being out of station – damn it, _out of town_ and abroad, and on flying visits to Pakistan, and it sounded mysterious and grown-up and exciting –, but I’ve never yet been on a plane and I never had a passport before and I’ve hardly been out of Yorkshire, and it’s _bloody_ overwhelming, like, and now, _now,_ we’ve had mysterious warnings and mysterious protection from –’

‘Oh, now,’ protested Niall, who was not commonly protestant, ‘you cannot be thinking such things, sure Maynooth wants British celebrities safe abroad, if he’s at SHAPE he’s as much diplomat as sojer, he is, and it was an MCC tie he’s wearin’, and Liam’s Liam, and as for your _Irish_ celebrity, wasn’t me uncle’s family tenants on Maynooth lands until the Land Acts –’

‘Oh, you don’t understand, you can’t, my people are looked at askance –’

‘Catch yourself on, darlin’ boy, catch yourself on! _We_ had to have Emancipation Acts, we did, and _generations_ of us have been labelled and lumped in with the feckin’ IRA simply for bein’ Irish: don’t tell _me_ what it’s like, suspicion and the cowld shoulder and all.’

‘ _Fuck,_ ’ said Zayn, extending an impulsive hand to Niall, ‘and my own mother’s family are Irish in part; I’m sorry.’

Niall was not a lad for shaking hands when he could hug, and he did just that until Liam’s meaningful coughing outdid _La Traviata._

‘So,’ said Harry. ‘Where _are_ we all staying?’

‘I’d booked us for the Flandre Angleterre,’ said Liam, half-apologetically.

‘Then that’s where we’ll all stay,’ said Harry. ‘I think we all want to talk, privately.’

‘Okay....’ Liam’s dubiety was evident.

It was Niall who diagnosed its cause. ‘Oh, they’ll manage an extry room,’ grinned he. ‘It’s a fecking joy to watch, however small and booked the hotel: in comes this dusty Irish busker, a lad hardly grown, in ripped jeans and carrying a guitar case, and puts down his passport and his credit card.... There’s always a daughter or a niece has heard, if the staff hasn’t, of the great and famous Niall Horan, and is a fan, and it gladdens the heart, it does, to watch them scramble and fall over themselves to kiss me arse after the looks they first gave me when I walked in.’

Louis sniggered, and then, unable to hold it in, guffawed. ‘I _like_ you, mate.’

Niall grinned back, and showed them, for what was, save to Harry, the first time, his gift of mimicry. ‘“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”.’

* * *

Louis was willing to take on board the Brigadier’s advice as to not giving out locations unduly over Twitter; but he did tweet praise for the restaurant, and followed it with this:

 

> Now joined on our travels by @Chef_Styles – top lad – and @AuthenticNialler. Good eats and good larks. Pinch me!

Which caused a Twitter meltdown when Harry responded with,

 

> @TomlinsonL: you’re pinched.

* * *

Niall’s prediction had been dead on, bar the succession of snobbery followed by boot-licking. Small and select as the Flandre Angleterre was, they had been accommodating, discreet, and imperturbable from the off, finding a twin room for the celebrated M Horan and the talented M Styles, that noted cuisinier: and a room, at that, adjoining the single of the athletic M Tomlinson, which in turn adjoined the _chambre supérieure_ of the _sportif_ M Payne and companion, Maître Malik.

It was into the latter that they all piled after settling in, to get to know properly those with whom they’d now be travelling. (Zayn carefully eschewed any of the numerous Chaucerian analogies which came to mind.)

Very early on, after Zayn had remarked upon the ‘timings’ of the local restaurants and shops, meaning the hours of business they kept, Niall, who – suspected Zayn, rightly – was the cleverest and most observant, indeed all-seeing, of them all, said, shrewdly, ‘Your family, lad, are a sight more interested in cricket than you actually are, sure.’

Zayn had blushed, and tried to brush the imputation aside, but it was no use.

‘Love,’ said Liam, in gentle reproach, ‘is that why you’re –’

Zayn buried his head in Liam’s broad chest. ‘Probably. I’m trying to use all the cricketing metaphors, like, that come so easy in Pakistani English. It’s not that I don’t like cricket –’

Irresistibly, Niall, with Harry and Louis joining in, began to chorus 10cc’s ‘Dreadlock Holiday’:

 

> _I don’t like cricket, oh, no,  
>  _ _I love it...._

Zayn couldn’t be arsed to give them two fingers. ‘– It’s. Well, they’re all cricket- _mad,_ and I don’t … follow it as much?’

‘Love.... Do you think I care?’

‘But – I mean, you don’t get on with Shakespeare, fault of your bloody teachers, that, but, and even so, you take such an interest in what –’

‘No, love, in _who._ I’m never going to be a scholar, but you are, and what interests you, interests me, because it’s _you_ I’m interested in. And I don’t have any doubt but that, even if cricket bored you stiff –’

Louis snorted, and muttered something which sounded _very_ like, ‘Stiff as a board’. Liam, it turned out, _could_ be arsed to put up two fingers.

‘– it wouldn’t mean anything to how you felt about _me._ ’

* * *

 

>  @TomlinsonL:  
>  @Chef_Styles Good lad nice little palate

* * *

‘So you _really_ aren’t together?’

Niall rolled his eyes at Louis and made noises of sheer pity. ‘He’s not getting an operation, he isn’t. So, no.’

‘I’m unclaimed and fancy-free,’ said Harry, with a great (and over the top) pretence of solemnity. ‘Or – I was.’

‘“Was”?’

‘Well, yah. I was on this train, and some cinnamon lad with eyes like the Dee Estuary and the most magnificent bum in human history boarded.’

Louis was, for the first time in his life, rendered speechless, to general delight. Niall solemnly handed Louis his room-key, and motioned for the key to Louis’ single in return.

‘Oops,’ said Louis, as Niall beamed.

‘ _Hi,_ ’ said Harry, meaningfully.

* * *

‘I want,’ said Liam, when they’d all talked well into the night and shared their secrets and dreams and most of their insecurities, and the others had then departed, ‘to know every one of your hurts.’

‘And I, yours,’ said Zayn.

‘And then, love, I’m going to kiss and suck and lick every last one of them away.’

Zayn looked at him, eyes dark. ‘We have a deal of work to do, don’t we, between us.’

‘Best get cracking,’ said Liam, with a shark’s smile.

 

* * *

Niall had never wanted to wire home for lawyers, guns, and money, and he’d never found out under dodgy circumstances that the latest bird ‘was with the Russians, too’; but, as he was proving even now, just up the street at Euro Spéciales Bières, he was damned well going home with a waitress, just as he always could do.

* * *

‘Mm,’ said Louis. ‘ _Good_ lad; nice little body.’

‘“Little”?’

‘I.... I stand corrected.’

‘Yah? Well, if you want this standing – I see you don’t. Come here....’

* * *

Liam had stuffed several jumpers, a towel, and a spare pillow between the headboard and the wall.

Just in case.

To be polite to others.

Zayn gulped.

 

* * *

Louis and Harry, rather notably, had _not._

* * *

‘Love,’ said Liam, in a black-velvet voice, ‘we’ll do – over and over – the things you want and talked about. And – my prostate has equal rights in this relationship, all right? In future, I expect you to shag me senseless. But tonight.... Tonight, love, it’ll be tender, and it’ll be slow, and it’ll be our last first time. All right?’

Zayn nodded, emphatically, and hurriedly.

* * *

The breakfasts at the Flandre Angleterre are by no means to be despised: breads and fruit and boiled eggs and ham (unless, of course, one may not eat the ham) and cereals. All the same, and though they did justice to them and perhaps a trifle over, the five lads were a bit somnolent the next morning, and none of them appeared – satisfied though they clearly were – to have had much sleep overnight.

Zayn, himself sitting very gingerly, blushed when Liam, as he sat down, stretched and cracked his back.

‘ _Hard_ bed, Payno?’ Louis was implausibly innocent.

‘My fault,’ said Zayn, with a level look – and an unprecedented level of smugness. ‘Hard heels, I’m afraid, and I think I drummed them into his spine like Grendel on the roof of Hart Hall.’

Niall sprayed croissant crumbs and a bit of coffee everywhere as he slid out of his chair, helpless with laughter.

Harry looked perplexed. ‘Did Zayn say he was wearing heels? I can never find any in my size....’

It was Louis’ turn to do a spit-take and be mocked, as Harry grinned a prankster’s grin. Liam was simply willing down the horn he’d got when Harry had conjured the picture of Zayn in heels: and Zayn took careful note of the fact.

* * *

Zayn began to wonder just a bit about the world and the people in it when he saw that he was now being followed, and welcomed as it were into the ranks, by several wives and girlfriends of various cricketers. That Liam might privately like to see him in knickers and heels was one thing, but this was as alarming as it was, in its way, encouraging. Acceptance is all very well, thought Zayn, but he really did hope people remembered he was a _bloke,_ and a fair masculine one, ba goom. (You can take the lad out of Yorkshire, but....)

* * *

At SHAPE, the Brigadier responded to the just-after-brekker summons of his chief, AVM Sir Alec Hamilton Rattray KCB CBE DSO DFC and Bar, HM Forces’ National Military Representative to NATO and SHAPE.

‘Ah. Morning, Robin. Do sit down. This isn’t company orders, and it is assuredly not an interview _without_ coffee. Do have some.

‘I understand that – with full support from the JIC, JIO, and Defence Intelligence, of course – you’ve interested yourself, quite suddenly, in five lads. Likely lads?’

‘I shouldn’t think so, Alec.’

‘Shouldn’t you? Pity the singer’s Irish rather than British, although I should think a joint operation could readily insert someone in his, ah, road crew....’

‘Useful – if he toured. He doesn’t, I gather.’

‘And you have been a busy gatherer, Robin. Yes, yes, I know you sent a message which was on my desk this morning, but, really, if this were all that urgent, you might have rung me up. “Channels” are all very well, but.... I think you’re too used to dealing with Jocks – I admit, there is none bolder than the Scottish soldier, and we can take the Green Hills of Tyrol as read – but they are on occasion thick as … boulders. Whereas _pilots,_ my good Robin....’

‘I do apologise.’

‘Mm. And as the auld wives say, mphm. Was this simply something the MCC and Clubland decided as being an intelligence concern – they _will_ do it – or...? Malik, for example: are we staving off radicalisation?’

The Brigadier raised an eyebrow. ‘Nothing short of a frame-up that put him in Yank hands at Gitmo could do that, and I don’t know that that’d suffice. He’s a loyal Briton. He could be soured by circumstances, but hardly _turned._ And, no, it wasn’t precisely a case of protecting a future England batsman, either, or, indeed, a future Premier Leaguer: Leeds United, I fear, for Tomlinson, not Hearts....’

Sir Alec sighed. ‘You know damned well my only interests are wild swimming, climbing, squash, and polo, Robin – you ought, you’ve played as my Number Three often enough. You’re incorrigible.’

‘Oh, good, my cover is bearing up under scrutiny. It’s quite simple, really, Alec. Here were five lads. Not, I think, likely to be of any use to the Green Slime or Six or who have you, although I suppose that Malik, as he rises in the teaching profession, may be of use as a spotter for pupils who might be. But: a British Asian who’s a British Muslim, two athletes on the cusp of fame, a chef who’ll be on the Beeb within five years and a sleb for his pains, and an Irish pop phenomenon. And it suddenly occurred to me – well, d’ you recall the conversation Sir Henry Wilson had with Foch on the eve of the Great War?’

‘Yes. Wilson asked the old man, If we sent an Expeditionary Force to the Continent, what was the smallest such force that’d be of use to the Frogs?’

‘Yes. And Foch’s reply –’

‘– Was that they wanted but one private soldier … and they’d see to it he was killed.’

‘Precisely. Now, we’ve both alike been inundated with these memoranda. _I_ don’t know if all this “chatter” everyone from Shrivenham and Chicksands to the Turks claim to have read over means anything, and neither, apparently, do the intelligence lot – what we pay rates and taxes for, I don’t know – but: assume it does.’

‘Ah.’ Sir Alec nodded. ‘Certainly the French and the Belgians are jumpy enough to suggest they really do think it does mean something, and the Germans, for all their pretence of calm, are shutting down rallies and monitoring undesirable elements – and, I expect, any number of innocent German Turks, as well. They can be a trifle heavy-handed, can Jerry.’

‘Can _you_ think, bar, say, an X-Factor winning boyband, of any four British youths and an Irishman we’d less wish to see in the crossfire?’

‘I see what you mean.’

‘If the balloon _were_ to go up – and the intelligence lot seem to think it’s straining visibly at its moorings – and our allies were to invoke Article Five, that’d be one thing. We’re the linchpin of NATO, of course we should respond: although they’d regret it had they failed to protect these lads, or, worse, harassed them because Mr Malik made one of the party. But I am _damned_ if the incompetence of the Continentals is going to endanger or get killed two future stars of sport, a chef, one of our Irish friends who’s a popstar loved by millions, and a Muslim, British Asian – who happens to be in a relationship with Mr Payne, at that. Nothing could be more likely to drag us unwillingly into _their_ cock-up: the Great British Public’d be – from Radio One to the MCC to the Premier League to Sir’s British Asian Trust to Peter Tatchell to Mary Berry and Nigel Bloody Slater, they’d be – bayin’ for terrorist blood, and indeed we should have a moral obligation to avenge these lads.’

‘And certain of our Continental allies have intelligence and security services who – _historically,_ of course – have not been above the use of _agents provocateurs._ ’ Auld Alliance or no Auld Alliance, Alec Hamilton Rattray had a healthy distrust of the French, and of certain of their neighbours. (Although Britain and Switzerland were perfectly respectable, and Monaco, Luxembourg, and Andorra weren’t worth worrying about.)

‘Yes: precisely. “One soldier...”’

‘“... and we shall make certain he’s a ‘casualty’”: quite. All the while, no doubt, banging on about the perfidy of Albion.’

‘Which – speaking as an Irish earl to a Scots laird – is _our_ line, they’ve no right to whinge, on the Continent.’

‘Och, aye, Rab: that’s gey true, ye canna trust the Sassenach.’ Sir Alec winked. ‘Well. I quite understand why the matter came to me Through Channels and as a _fait accompli_. You’ve done well.’

‘Thank you, Alec.’

‘I only hope that your ægis suffices for their protection and good treatment. It had damned well best do,’ added Sir Alec, grimly, in a tone that boded ill for their allies if it did not, ‘or I’ll know the reason why.’

* * *

‘I’ve had an email,’ said Liam, wonderingly, ‘from the Brigadier.’

Zayn was reading over his shoulder, and grinning despite himself. ‘He called you “Doctor”. I suppose that make me a companion.’ It was almost enough to cause Zayn to forget his suspicions; or, rather, to focus them on Louis, who was making Certain Comments in which the names of Rose and of Adric figured: _I wonder which you are...._

Harry already had Louis sussed, and moved swiftly to stave off disaster. ‘What does he say?’

‘Only some suggestions for good places to spend Christmas, and advice that, if we can bear it – he knows modern music is different to his own tastes – the New Year in Vienna isn’t bad, and he could wangle tickets to the concert – not the big one, but.’

‘Actually,’ said Harry; and Niall cut in with a swift, ‘That’d be the great craic, it would: _ceol agus craic_.’

‘All right,’ said the practical Liam: ‘that’s sorted, more or less. What about today?’

‘I want to go back to bed,’ said Louis, yawning. ‘To _sleep,_ you dirty-minded sods.’

‘That’s your aim, _bed’s_ the last place you want to be,’ sarked Zayn.

Harry leered.

‘Jaysus, lads. What for don’t we make t’day a quiet day, then, and plan on leaving t’morra?’ Louis adamantly resisted totting up, in his head, expenses to pay back. He remained unhappy about these arrangements, Harry or no Harry, and however much joy they brought Ziam. ‘Where are we going to, then?’

‘Um. I thought, Liège?’ Louis felt specially unhappy in speaking up when he was, to his utter humiliation, more or less free-loading – or felt himself to be.

Niall could not conceivably have cared less, or been more enthusiastic. ‘Sounds like the craic! What’s in Liège?’

‘Stade Maurice Dufrasne,’ said Harry, before anyone else could do. ‘Home to Standard Liège FC.’ Louis felt his heart swell with affection. ‘And four Michelin-starred restaurants.’

‘Feck, I’m in,’ said Niall, happily.

‘We can leave just after noon for Brussels, change there, and be in Liège at 2.1 in the afternoon,’ said Liam, and settled it.

* * *

‘I don’t.’ Louis cleared his throat. ‘I don’t normally just. Well.’

‘“Fall into bed with blokes I’ve just met”? Neither do I,’ smiled Harry.

‘I didn’t mean –’

‘I know. Louis?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Louis, would you go out with me? I mean, yah, discreetly, just for us, but. Make this real, and official? I know it’s early days –’

Louis cut him off, quite effectively, with a devouring and desperate snog.

* * *

‘My shout,’ said Liam, rising to get in another round.

‘They have table service here,’ smiled Zayn, who’d been observing – well, observing anything that happened to be in the same plane of vision as was Liam, off whom he had hardly taken his eyes even when Niall had engaged him in conversation. Niall, for his part, was already summoning a waiter.

That settled, Zayn managed to tear himself away from Liam long enough to ask, ‘Nialler.... Is Harry. I mean, he can’t be that clumsy and hopeless in a kitchen, like.’

‘Cooks like an angel, does he,’ affirmed Niall. ‘Doesn’t mean he doesn’t want looking after when he’s out of one: the kitchen’s his comfort zone. And the whole sexy-but-helpless baa-lamb turn … the Devil but it’s done him no end of good when he’s been on the pull, so it has. It’s not an act, all the same: he wants a keeper. It’s no filter he has, and he’s too innocent, with it.’

‘Tommo’s always wanted someone to look after, like. You see –’

‘I _do_ see, sure, plain as grass on the hills. Do not you be fretful over it, Zayn Malik, it’s real already, as real as the two of you – and it’s glad I am to be shed of the responsibility – and they’re as suited as mash and cabbage.’ Niall paused, with a look of reverent reverie. ‘Speaking of which, when we settle of a night on a place with a kitchen, and a market near, we must have that man-een make colcannon, it’s better nor me Gran’s own....’

With an air of sudden decision, he rose, and left, leaving Zayn and Liam to stare at one another in utter confusion. That confusion resolved, ten minutes after, just as they were about to call for their bill and go in search of him, when they saw him take up a station on the pavement outside, guitar in hand, case open for coin in the best busking tradition, and begin to sing the old, traditional song:

 

> _Did you ever eat colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?_  
>  _With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.  
>  _ _Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake  
>  _ _Of the creamy, flavoured butter that our mothers used to make?_

* * *

Harry and Louis, walking hand-in-hand, giggling hand-in-glove, and moving in a pink and heart-shaped bubble, heard the chords and the voice as they came ’round the corner.

 

> _O you did, so you did, so did he and so did I._  
>  _And the more I think about it, sure, the nearer I’m to cry.  
>  _ _Ah, wasn’t them the happy days when troubles we knew not,  
>  _ _And our mothers made colcannon in the little skillet pot._

Louis’ face became utterly elfin with mischief to be managed, and he and a laughing Harry raced forwards.

‘Who do you think _you_ are, mate,’ Louis heckled: ‘ _Niall Horan?_ ’

Niall grinned with delight. ‘And who are you, then? Geoff I-Love-A-Boy-cott?’ He turned to Harry, who was now simply giggling. ‘You could do better, lad – what’s your name? Harry, is it? And are you marryin’ this truculent Yorkshire tyke? Well, then....’

 

> _Step we –_ gaily – _, on we go:_  
>  _Heel for heel and toe for toe,  
>  _ _Arm and arm and row on row,  
>  _ _All for_ Harry’s _wedding...._

* * *

By the time the gendarmes (technically rather the Police Nationale) moved them on – all five of them – Niall had done very well indeed (‘my round tonight, lads’), and had left the commandant in tears of laughter at finding that this troublesome busker _was,_ in fact, Niall Horan. And there was ample time left in the day to begin Louis’ programme (Liam’s idea though it had been) of going to see – with, as it happened, a letter from the commandant and the promise of a way-smoothing telephone message from M le Préfet – the home of _Les Dogues,_ Lille OFC, at Pierre-Mauroy.

They had begun as they meant to go on, and were deliriously happy.

 

* * *

Liam firmly believed he was – and particularly when measured against his new mates and his new _mate_ – thick; Zayn knew better. Zayn realised Niall was perhaps, at the end of the day, the cleverest of them; he knew he did not, yet, know Harry well enough to make a judgement; but he knew that the wisest man is the one who, encountering a gap in his knowledge, does not front it, but rather confronts it, asks and looks things up and, like the mongoose, Goes and Finds Out. (One of his father’s precepts, recalled Zayn, was that, if _Kim_ were, as it had been, the favourite novel of Nehru, and, more to the point, if Kipling were not disfavoured by Nehru’s old friend and old enemy the Great Leader, Jinnah, there must be something in the man; and Zayn had had Kipling dinned into him in his childhood alongside Muhammad Iqbal’s verses and the folklore and fairy stories of his grandfather’s homeland – and Milne and Carroll and Lewis and Tolkien, Stevenson and Scott and the ould tales of Ireland as well.)

Liam, then, was wise: for he knew how much he didn’t know, and he always Went and Found Out.

* * *

Booking online was all very well; but it was typical of Liam that he had chosen also to step over to the nearby station, whence the TGV trains to Liège departed, to learn the facts on the ground and take a look at the rolling stock. Zayn had, of course, gone with him.

The old gentleman – the stationmaster, more or less – had mused, ‘Ah, of course: you are English, and it is the centenary. I suppose you are going to Huy (La Sarte).’

Liam had been politely non-committal, saying something innocuous to the effect that ‘if time permitted’; but, after much investigation – Liège he could search on the ’Net, but spelling Huy from a cold start had been a facer – had seen what the old boy had meant.

* * *

They went, happily, larkily, to Liège, via Brussels – to which they intended to return – Niall merry as a grig, Harry and Louis falling, steadily as a barometer, in love, Zayn and Liam already there; but Liam seemed, for reasons only Zayn could partly grasp, occasionally just a trifle distrait. They had already begun to become used to one another; and they had begun already to expect as a matter of course that, if ever they did in some emergency run across Customs or Border Controls in the Schengen Area, they should be treated with deference and sped through with a smile. Thus does custom make familiar expectation.

‘So,’ said a bouncy and Tiggerish Tommo upon arrival. ‘The stadium?’

‘About that,’ said Liam. ‘There’s a train to Huy in a few minutes – well, there’s one every twenty-six minutes. Zayn and I – you needn’t come if you don’t like –’

‘If we do like, we’re welcome?’

‘Of course, Haz.’

‘Then we’re going. What’s in Huy?’

Liam shifted from foot to foot. ‘I. There’s no use my trying to explain – Zayn could –’

‘No,’ said Louis; ‘whatever it is, it’s important to you, so of course we’re going, whatever it turns out to be.’

* * *

Beneath a leaden, wintry sky, they arrived at Huy, halfway to Namur from Liège. Zayn was wearing his Union Jack cap, and in any case they were all five so obviously from the British Isles, four Englishmen and an Irishman abroad, that people on the platform guessed immediately at their purpose, and, in strongly Walloon-accented English, gave them directions before they could ask: somewhat to Harry’s disappointment, as he enjoyed the feeling of indispensability which came of being the only one fluent in French.

As they walked up the slope of the hill South of Huy, towards the hamlet of La Sarte, the lads fell silent. They could see their destination, and knew at once what it was: what it must be.

The tidy turf well-tended, like an English country house lawn.

The ordered rows of gravestones.

The quiet and the peace.

And raised against the horizon, the Cross of Sacrifice; the Valley of the Meuse beneath it, as the slope fell away.

Those wearing hats removed them as they reached the gates, airy iron set between massy pillars of stone.

The Glorious Dead awaited them, with all-enfolding charity: some half a hundred of HM Forces, and as many of His Majesty’s Canadian Forces: in the unsleeping care and watch and tenderness of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, who make a corner of these foreign fields forever homely.

Liam had discovered – at some cost of sleep – their website; and knew that there were Biddulphs and Paynes and Harrises, Brannans and Bromleys, Styleses and Tomlinsons and Horans and Nolans and all, forever ageless – they shall not grow old – throughout Flanders and France; he knew, also, that Huy (La Sarte) was the largest Great War military cemetery near to Liège, where war-wounds and the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1919 had torn so many from the unremitting struggle the Casualty Clearing Station had waged, hopelessly, against death.

And here, he knew, they slept, and the lads should find them: Pte Challoner, 160th  Coy, Labour Corps, who should nevermore return to Hanley in sweet Staffordshire; Pte Arthur Timmins, 4 th  Bn, the Cheshire Regiment, who should look no more upon Birkenhead and the Wirral and the haze of light upon the unresting sea; Air Mechanic 2 d  Class M Curran, Aero Service Unit RAF, a long way from County Waterford on a winding trail he could never retrace, an air-minded Irishman who, whatever Yeats believed, should not have foreseen in high poetry his own death; Rifleman T Pease, 2 d /8 th  Bn, the West Yorkshires (the Prince of Wales’ Own), resting out the centuries far from Leeds; Pte Thomas William Jones, 18 th  Bn, the King’s Regiment (the Liverpool Regiment), formerly of 13 th  Bn, the Cheshires; Pte J Mason, 5 th  Bn, the Connaught Rangers, who answered Ireland’s call and John Redmond’s, to secure by service Home Rule, and who should thus never again have known the soft rain of Blackpool, Cork, on the road to Mallow, or should now sleep in the embrace of that native, emerald turf....

A century gone, their war; and now the cooling towers of a nuclear plant, the _Centrale Nucléaire de Tihange,_ rivalling Lutyens’ Cross for domination of the valley scene, marked how vast a crevasse of time sundered their days from these, unimaginably. Yet there was a kinship there, in this corner of a foreign field, a bond and a recognition.

* * *

It was a subdued and thoughtful return by rail to Liège: but not bitter, or depressing. The lads were agreed that it had been the right thing to do, and a moving one. They had paid just tribute to valour and sacrifice; they had given what was due. Now they could go on with what they meant to accomplish, in the knowledge that they had done right by the claims of the dead.

* * *

 

>   
>  @Pukka_Payne:  
>  To #HuyLaSante w/ @zjmalik @TomlinsonL @Chef_Styles @AuthenticNialler. #1914 #WeWillRememberThem

The Brigadier, when this came to his attention, adverted Sir Alec to it, with the slight smugness of the vindicated prophet.

* * *

Louis’ constitutional bounciness did not, nor should he have wished it to, return immediately and in a rush, but it came back all the same, as was meet and proper. Before ever they had left Wombourne, he had emailed, from his Warks CCC account – Liam was not, whatever he thought, thick –, not only to the merchandising department but to the vice-chairman of the club, as he had done for all the stadiums Louis hoped to visit; and, Liège being second to Lille on their known itinerary, had made a firm appointment, for a tour which was not of the common sort and did not require that he get a group of at least twenty-five together to take the tour.

They got the full treatment – not least when ‘M Payne’s party’ was discovered to contain M Tomlinson and M _Niall_ -’oran (Harry resolved to call his best mate ‘Nylorahng’ from then onwards) – from frescoes to changing-rooms to the pitch, taken ’round by the marketing executives and with quite a few players stopping to chat. It became necessary to chivvy Zayn away from the frescoes by Kaer; Liam spent rather a frustrating half-hour trying, by request, to explain cricket to a group of fascinated but perplexed _Les Rouches_ footballers (Ronnie Stam, right back for Standard, who had done time with Wigan Athletic, did what he might to help, but it was no use); everyone exerted themselves, in vain, to determine a match date on which Niall could drop by and Be Musical; and, with a sense of apotheosis, Louis joined in for half an hour’s practice time and drills.

Harry, who perforce had become fluent in French whilst being Bocuse-trained, almost missed seeing that, as it all but wanted a jemmy to pry him and the team’s chef-dietitian-nutritionist apart, out of the kitchens, and from their highly technical and excited discussion. Fortunately, this was managed in time for Haz to watch Louis on the pitch with fond admiration … and not a little drooling.

* * *

 

>   
>  @TomlinsonL:  
>  All the respect in the world for @RonnieStam & the lads at @Standard_RSCL cracking tour w Haz Liam Nialler & Zaynie

 

* * *

They were a happy group of lads who returned, after dinner, to the Hotel Neuvice. By this point, Louis had simply left off worrying himself into a decline over what recompense he owed Liam, and now Niall as well, as it was evident that neither intended to take any such, and were treating the trip as ‘their round, you can get the next one in, mate’: which he intended to, quite likely in the Caribbean, once he’d started playing and put a bit aside. Zayn, for his part, accepted the intimate and expensive quarters for two reasons: ‘intimate’ and ‘Liam’ went together in his mind like Beaumont and Fletcher, and he liked hotels which as a matter of course had _libraries_ for the guests. Harry, of course, asked only three things: food, a bed, and Louis in that bed; and so long as there were nosh and pints, Niall should have been happy to sleep rough beneath a bridge.

That, thought Zayn, was a point worth pondering. So long as he had books, and Liam, and the chance to sleep late as often as possible, he was satisfied. Or was he? Materially, he supposed so: no one contemplates becoming a teacher for the dosh. And yet, he couldn’t honestly say he lacked ambition, or drive. He intended to be the best there was in his profession (he remembered the words Bolt had given Sir Thomas More, when Rich had rejected the idea of teaching because no one should hear or care if he did bad or ill: Who would know? ‘You, your pupils, your friends; God. Not a bad public, that’). He had slaved and trained for the chance. He had ruthlessly suppressed and cast aside all the other dreams he’d had. It had been an instance of the same will and drive which was enabling Zayn even then – although he could _murder_ a packet of fags – to continue his determined effort to stop smoking, for Liam’s sweet sake.

He remembered, with hallucinatory clarity, a brief conversation, six years prior, at that party, when he and Louis and Liam, darling Liam, had all confessed, shyly, that they’d toyed with the idea of trying out for _The X-Factor:_ in Liam’s case, for a second go. He’d wondered, since, why Liam hadn’t done: it had been evident even then that Liam was not the sort to back down from a challenge, or fail to avenge a defeat. He understood, now, he rather thought. Liam had had to make a choice of which defeat – which failure, in his eyes if in no one else’s – to avenge, and decide which mattered most. And for Liam, being not quite Olympic standard as a runner had been to be Not Good Enough, and he had found a brick wall or two – boxing first, and then, apter to his purpose, cricket – to batter through with only his own head as his hammer. Liam also had ruthlessly cut out other blandishments, other temptations, other dreams, to achieve professional standard in something he was bent upon doing.

And so, surely, must Niall have done, sacrificing who knew what to become a more influential songwriter even than Ed Sheeran, if no rival – by his own choice – to that man as a _singer_ -songwriter; and Harry, to go to a foreign country and learn a new language and earn the highest professional qualifications in one of the most demanding of professions.

And then there was Louis, who’d stuffed himself in a closet until now and eat and drank and slept and dreamt only his ambition.

His own, and Louis’, clinging, realised Zayn, to adolescent mischief, cannabis and graffiti and larks and pranks, had been a last, reluctantly abandoned link to days when a dream was safely in the future, could be fantasised to be _effortlessly_ obtainable, need not be seized and sweated for; and those days were past, and they were seizing those dreams by the forelock and sweating to master them – and with every prospect of earnt success. Niall and Harry and Liam, beloved Liam, had already mastered their own dreams. Liam – sweet, sensible, funny, adorable Liam – was enjoying already – Niall and Haz were enjoying already – the fruits of their labours; and Liam – sweet, sensible, funny, adorable Liam – was not wrong in doing so. Only he could know fully the price he’d paid for his successes. Only he could say, then, what was due him. He had taken, clearly, with ease, like a man slipping into an old pair of slippers, to the material riches he had at his command, and to the perks of celebrity; but Liam, being as sensible as he was, clearly was not, even as Niall surely was not, enamoured of riches and the ease they bought save as recompense for exertion and as means to his ends.

And he, Zayn, was now being offered – had accepted, without want of words and negotiation – the best of all possible futures, financial ease (for Liam, sensible and douce, clearly meant to go on as he had begun, and, after his playing days should have ended, and he not having wasted his earnings, to become a sport impresario) even as he pursued his unremunerative dream of teaching.... And all this simply as a happy consequence of what he wanted most, wanted even more passionately than his goals theretofore: Liam and love and life with Liam....

No. Liam could think what he liked, but Zayn knew better. The man he loved was not in the least thick. And it was for Zayn, clever as he was, to be worthy of him.

* * *

‘Tommo....’

‘Payno, oughtn’t you to be in bed, and I don’t mean sleeping?’

‘Just a moment of your time. Who’s your agent? Well, you want one. Look, I’m with Activate, and they represent footballers as well, let me give you their contact, all right? Best to get started early.’

* * *

‘I feel,’ said Harry, ‘as if we ought to go out and do something date-like.’

Louis – chuffed already from Liam’s word in his shell-like – grinned. ‘Niall had a suggestion – he knows you too well, and was certain you’d say that.’

‘Oh? What’s a chaste, walking-out suggestion from Our Nialler, then?’

‘We’re in Belgium, Harry. We’re in _Liège,_ come to that. _Waffles._ ’

‘Oh, no,’ moaned Harry, ‘it’s ten to one Niall’ll already _be_ there, no matter where we fetch up. And....’

‘And?’

‘I am trying,’ said Harry, earnestly and through set teeth, ‘to be good, and _court_ you, and take this slow. But. If I am confronted with vanilla and honey, Demerara sugar and pearl sugar, and perhaps some fruit, _sod_ the _gaufres de Liège,_ I need, _need,_ to eat all that off _you._ ’

Louis’ breath caught in his throat.

* * *

Two honeyed brunettes of university age were standing irresolutely near a waffle stand in the street, speaking in their native Castilian Spanish and staring helplessly at a map, tourists, for the use of.

‘Perhaps,’ said Niall, insinuatingly, in the same tongue, waffle in one hand and beer in the other, ‘I might have the too-great honour of assisting the beautiful ladies?’

* * *

‘You know,’ said Zayn, grinding his taut, gloriously naked bum on Liam’s burgeoning erection through Liam’s jeans, ‘I was wrong. You’re not _dim,_ babe, although you’re not catching on quickly enough to what I want, but you _are_ … thick. And _long._ ’

‘Oi, love, that’s....’

‘No insult. But if you feel it deserves a spanking all the same … we did gentle last night, I’m ready for something – _more_.’

‘I. Can. Tell.’

‘Mm? _Can_ you?’

‘I think I _will_ spank you, love.’ Liam’s eyes were narrowed, and his smile, at once lazy and dangerous. ‘But not with me hand. Tongue, first, I think.’ Zayn moaned, and ground down, simply rutting. ‘And then with my cock.’

‘ _Yesssss, Leeyum,_ ’ moaned Zayn, already writhing.

* * *

It is grossly unfair to say that the Low Countries possess no, or, alternately, boring, scenery. All the same, the elder Breughel might have passed through in the night and dropped the Alps into the Low Country landscapes in fact as he had done on canvas, and the five lads should all the same have slept, as they did in the event sleep, through most of the next day’s rail journey, Liège to Rotterdam via Bruxelles-Midi.

* * *

They had booked in at Pincoffs – trust Liam and Niall, who by now were quite openly in charge of the entire trip and underwriting the damned thing, something Harry had taken as a matter of course, Louis had resigned himself to, and Zayn had finally accepted as what amounted to a combined trousseau and engagement gift – and Louis expected that they should next travel to the cricket ground of Hazelaarweg and admire Liam as the VOC club cricketers politely mobbed him.

That was not, it appeared, the plan.

‘De Kuip? _De Kuip?_ Payno....’

‘I thought you’d like to see it.’ No one could resist, as Zayn knew best of all, the patent Payne pout and pushed-out bottom lip and puppy-eyes.

‘Of _course_ I want to see Feijenoord Stadion,’ said The Tommo, ‘but –’

‘It’s all arranged,’ said Liam. ‘I … well, a friend of a friend set it up after I’d emailed.’

Louis thought for a moment of what professional footballers in England happened to come from the Netherlands generally, let alone Rotterdam specifically … and yelped.

‘You _wrote_ to _Van Persie?_ ’

‘Well, obviously. Reminds me: check your Twitter. He’s following you now, and you and Zayn have been verified.’

* * *

Louis was over the moon. (For one thing, Feyenoord and Spurs have a rivalry which delighted Louis’s soul, he like many Northerners regarding clubs south of the Watford Gap as having no business playing football.) They were made the guests of Colin Kazim-Richards and Luke Wilkshire, who, being from Leytonstone and Wollongong respectively, not only spoke English – which is always useful – but knew who and what Liam was to boot. (CKR being Antiguan on his dad’s side, who had worshipped at the shrine of Sir Viv, and Wilkshire being, after all, from Oz, they were insistent upon discussing the various prospects of England, the Windies, and the Baggy Greens in the coming Tests, future Ashes, and the CWC.) And De Kuip was being modernised, in a massive makeover, which was of considerable interest to Louis and should be so to English football when he returned to Blighty with a player’s perspective. It bid fair to be a wonderful two hours at the ground.

Naturally, with Louis riding high, the Fates – those cackling, crafty old besoms – had something in store for him. Liam was discussing how every batsman he knew, himself included, lost his bottle for at least a fortnight after Sean Abbott’s unlucky bouncer and the tragic death of Phil Hughes. Niall was holding forth on how being a pop phenomenon was even better for pulling than being a national sport icon. Zayn was running a gentling hand down Liam’s back, quite openly, as he mourned Phil Hughes’ death.

And Harry had been watching, rapturously, Louis on the pitch; who now, exhilarated into incaution, came to the touchline and forgot himself so far as to exchange a smile with Harry which could not possibly be explained away as anything save what it was, and to lean in for a swift kiss.

As he pulled back, eyes slowly fluttering back open, he suddenly remembered where they were. The blood drained from his face, then flooded back.

‘So you two are together?’

Louis looked as if he was about to crumple in upon himself, and Harry was equally stricken; the other three could not breathe, even to begin a diversion or try somehow to pass it off as – something, anything, else.

Then Louis stood tall – well, as tall as he might in the nature of things – and squared his shoulders, and through dry lips said, ‘Yes. Yes, we are.’

‘Strewth! Good on yeh, mite!’ A clap on the back for Harry, then: ‘Don’t let this one get aw’y, he’s got bollocks, it’s about time someone in this gime hed some.’

Harry beamed. ‘I’m not giving him up. Ever.’

‘Stone the crows, I’d hope not! You stand by him, two of yeh’ll conquer the bleedin’ world. Now, P’yno, y’ were s’yin’?’

* * *

‘Tommo....’

‘Just – don’t, Zaynie.’

‘’M proud of you.’

Louis ducked his head.

‘We all are,’ said Liam: a claim underwritten by Harry’s radiant joy and Niall’s broadcast approval. ‘All the same –’

‘Oh, God, _what?_ ’

‘I think you and Haz, if you like, can be excused the tour of the VOC ground, and go back to the hotel if you prefer.’

‘You think we want a long talk over this.’

Liam shook his head. ‘No, mate. I was thinking more of a celebratory shag.’

‘Oh.’ Louis looked over at Harry, who was beaming at him like Sandettie Lightvessel – automatically. ‘ _Oh._ ’

Niall grinned. ‘Think how much more space there is for a really athletic shag now: cramped places, closets, I’m thinkin’.’

* * *

Feyenoord’s official account tweeted in short order how pleased they’d been to have had as guests MM Tomlinson – ‘who’ll go far’ –, Payne, Horan, Malik, and Styles; which Luke and CKR endorsed, adding that Louis looked formidable on the pitch and they’d been delighted to have someone, and that someone, Big Payno of Warks, with whom to talk cricket.

By now, it was kicking off: every pap on the Continent wished to snap Niall, and Harry, and this Tomlinson bloke, and _especially_ to get the first snaps of Liam Payne and his new boyfriend.

Even without an email from the Brigadier – although Liam had one in short order – the lads knew this was afoot, and were beginning to take a certain delight in matching their wits against the paps. _Game on._

* * *

Later that evening, after the other three had returned from Hazelaarweg and they’d all five met for dinner, Liam refused, gently but firmly, to allow Louis to deflect and divert the conversation to what he and Haz had missed at the cricket.

‘Tommo.... You know you’re not any more out than you care to be, don’t you? Colin and Luke’ll keep shtum, they’ll certainly not go about bearing tales.’

Louis smiled, a little wistfully. ‘Okay, Payno, I get that, I do. But. It’ll happen again. It’ll go on happening.

‘I was really quite good at this: keeping meself in the closet, I mean. But that was.... I didn’t have a Harry then.’

Niall grinned.

‘Oh, get stuffed, Nialler,’ said Louis, ‘you really _are_ the straightest thing alive, going about with this one, letting people think you two were a couple so birds’d try and convert you to heterosexuality, and never so much as swapping blowies or a hand-job.’

Niall managed to look impossibly innocent, and Zayn and Liam could only marvel at Harry’s poker face – and at the fact that The Tommo wasn’t picking up on that, at all. It was one of those poker faces that so was so obtrusively good it failed of its own object and became a tell.

‘Well,’ said Niall, ‘it’s a rocky road to travel, if that’s your decision – and if it is, Tommo me lad, we’re behind y’ ta the hilt and halfway up the haft o’ the handle – but, there, if there’s a lad can manage it, it’s yourself. Braver nor you think y’ are, whatever.’

Louis shook his head. ‘’S a hundred and more graves at Huy say different. _I’m_ not brave. Shamed into it, I am.’

‘You’re strong,’ protested Harry.

‘Oh, Haz.... _You_ make me strong. You, and even these supportive twats.’

‘Ah, now,’ said Niall, ‘it’s through fire and water we’d carry ye, and it’s the same for us y’ waad do, but. It’ll all be right on the night, ye’ll see. Faith! Haven’t y’ _us_ behind ye?’

‘I won’t take charity,’ said Louis, warningly.

‘And it’s I’ll not offer it, nor Liam nor Haz nor Zayn, there; but brotherly support y’ _will_ take.’

Harry coughed, meaningfully.

‘Jaysus, all right, for certain values of “brotherly”....’

* * *

Liam had changed the subject shortly after, to Louis’ unfeigned and undisguised relief.

‘Schedules,’ had he said. ‘I thought … well. North to Amsterdam, and then on to Denmark and Hamlet’s castle and that; and then Germany. Did you realise that Christmas here, all through the Continent, they … they don’t have _panto?_ ’

‘Chrisht, they don’t, do they.’ Niall had been as obviously disappointed as had Liam been, and indeed all five had been taken aback.

‘Now, we agreed the New Year in Vienna; but, well, if we can’t have a proper Christmas, I thought we might have –’

‘An _improper_ one?’ Louis had managed a sly grin even amidst his worries.

‘I’ve no patience with you,’ had said Liam, patiently. ‘I thought: Why not Switzerland?’

‘ _Chocolate,_ ’ had moaned Harry in swift agreement, already seeing himself ensconced happily in a kitchen – even as his moan had caused Louis’ mind to head directly to a mental bedroom.

They had agreed this plan; and Zayn had wasted little time thereafter in breaking them up and dragging Liam to their rooms. Take-Charge Liam did things to Zayn’s libido even he could not articulate.

‘You. Get. Me. So –’ Zayn had used Liam’s very body to slam the door, and, pressing Liam against that door, had now all but climbed him.

‘You get off on my taking charge, love?’ Liam sounded pardonably smug: not least because he was supporting Zayn with one hand. The other was … engaged.

‘Sooo _hot,_ babe –’

‘I’m in charge, then, tonight, am I?’

Zayn actually _felt_ his arsehole twitch with anticipation. ‘Yes.... _Please,_ Leeyum....’

‘What I say, goes?’

‘ _Yes,_ anything –’

Liam grinned. ‘Oh, good. Then _you’re_ fucking _me_ tonight.’

It took a moment for Zayn’s brain to catch on; but his body had twigged at once, to judge by the dollop of pre-come his cock had blurted out even as Liam had spoken.

* * *

Zayn – sated and worn out though he was – woke suddenly in the small hours. He wasn’t at first certain why he had, although his heart was racing. It began to calm as he realised he was held safe in Liam’s arms.

Then there came another blinding stab of light, and a noise like Eric Pickles falling onto a sheet of tin; and then the surge and rattle of a downpour on roof and eave.

‘’S all right,’ said Liam, sleepily, ‘I’ve got you.’

* * *

In Amsterdam, to which they travelled the next morning, it was a pleasure and a relief to Louis to have Liam centre-stage. It was a foggy day, and damp, and grey, mist-veiled, with all things in the middle distance seen as through translucent paper and all beyond blotted out wholly. Niall was unfathomably cheerful under the circumstances he’d related of his preceding night.

‘– unlike the lads I’m travelling with, so, as I was not sleepy, out I went with me guitar and found a pitch on the pavement. Well, the crowds didn’t show much interest in pop, and little more in Sinatra and Bennett and all, but y’ can fetch them always with the ould songs, and them comin’ out of clubs even.

‘So I’d given a new crowd the set, I’d just given them “The Rocky Road t’ Dublin” –’

 

> _In Mullingar last night,_  
>  _I rested limbs so weary,_  
>  _Started by daylight,_  
>  _Next morning bright and early,_  
>  _Took a drop of the pure,_  
>  _To keep my heart from sinking,  
>  _ _That’s the Paddy’s cure,  
>  _ _When he's on the drinking –_

‘– and it was “Whiskey In the Jar” I was singin’, and not without thinkin’ o’ Zayn and Liam –’

 

> _Whack-fol the daddy-o_

‘– when it came on. Jaysus, the thunder and the lightning that was in it, and me cramming the guitar in the case atop th’ takin’s and it hardly closing for the coin and the notes – something I never before complained of in m’ life, but there was not time to take them out before putting the instryment away – and there’s myself and everyone on the square legging it and getting soaked all the same whatever! But wasn’t I the thankful lad when I got inta the hotel and went to me room, and it was quiet bar the rainstorm: sure and I’d forgot what a night was without the sound of shagging from the rooms t’ either side.’

Niall had leant back luxuriously and grinned as his four friends blushed.

No, Louis was very glad to be off the train and no longer a captive audience for Niall’s anecdotes, and very glad to allow the day to be all about Liam.

Naturally, Liam, although delighted to spend some time in the nets, to put on an impromptu clinic, and to make friends with absolutely everyone at VRA, and show Zayn off, was not about to allow Louis to become a shrinking violet or to have time to second-guess himself. They were, all too soon, out of the Amstelveen suburbs and – onward through the fog – rocking along on the Metro to Amsterdam itself. Nor was their destination a succession of coffee shops in which, had things not taken the turn they had done in a Midlands petrol-station forecourt, it might have been expected that Zayn and Louis, clinging to their adolescence, should have lost themselves for a day or three. No: Liam, he of the schedules and the 6.0AM training drills and the healthy meals and the gym sessions, was in charge, and that meant they were headed for the ‘ArenA’, the home of AFC Ajax.

* * *

Everyone had been gracious and welcoming.

It had been a complete frost.

Thulani Serero, Ajax’ South African midfielder, had volunteered to take them around. He was so very kind, and polite, and accommodating, that Louis, in the state of mind he’d been in since the Feyenoord stop, mistook it for a piss-take, and assumed he had either been outed after all by gossip, or, worse, had, now that he was in a relationship, become so obvious that no one wanted to be told to know.

Liam, recognising that the worst thing that could conceivably happen to Louis’ future were his being mistaken for a racist, drew Serero into a discussion, much to the homesick Saffer’s delight, of cricket, not omitting the 1999 Cricket World Cup, in which the Proteas had rolled India over by four wickets in Hove, had embarrassed England by122 runs at the Oval, and, in a match at Amstelveen, had won handily against Kenya by seven wickets.

This worked, in its way, but it left Louis more isolated and withdrawn than before, from which neither Harry’s charm – muted by the fear, and that largely Louis’ contagious and communicable fear, of his going too far and being too obvious as to their relationship – nor Niall’s ebullience could extricate him; and it left Zayn exposed.

Ajax are like Tottenham in this, that they have become by historical accident the adopted ‘Jewish side’ in top-tier football in their home country: and the opposing supporters in the terraces are brutal towards Ajax and its supporters, making the same gas-hissing noises, raising the same arms in the same Nazi salutes, and chanting the same sort of ‘Hamas! Hamas! Yids to the gas!’ chants. Attempting not to give imagined offence, the management staff assisting in the tour walked on eggshells to avoid controversy and managed only thereby to insult Zayn inadvertently whilst Liam was too busy protecting Louis from the consequences of his own combination of strop and funk to notice and intervene.

It was a sour and moping lot who returned that night to the hotel (the Toren, naturally). Niall was not about to stand for _that_.

‘All right,’ said he, ‘feck this. We’re going out tonight, we are, and it’s not, “No”, that I’ll take for an answer. The four of ye want t’ get sorted and have _fun_ or what for are we doing this? Liam, I love ye, darling boy, but it’s a gap year this is, not a milit’ry campaign, and yourself as Wellington. There’s many a club and bar on Reguliersdwarsstraat is straight-friendly: get showered, all of ye, and put on your clubbin’ clobber, we leave in an hour.’

* * *

‘Leeyum?’

‘Why, are my eyes bugging out?’

‘A little. I’m just as … there aren’t words, babe.’

‘Haz and Tommo seem to be having fun.’

‘They’re not seeing anything but themselves. _We_ keep being interrupted by. Um.’

‘They don’t mean to be.’ It was true that the pests of one or another sort who were swarming around Liam and Zayn like wasps ’round a jam-pot likely meant no harm; but neither Liam nor Zayn – _particularly_ Zayn – was at all charitable towards any chancer who chanced his arm and tried it on. They were possessive sods, the both of them. (So was Harry, but it was masterful, the fashion in which he was managing Louis, aided by the fact that, although, on the one hand, The Tommo had never seen _anything_ like this crowd and might otherwise be tempted to gawk, on the other, The Tommo had never seen anything _like_ this crowd, and was afraid to focus on anything save Hazza.)

As for Niall, he was dancing like a loon, accepting his body weight in free drinks and showing no sign of feeling it, and managing to turn down those who danced with him and bought him rounds without giving the slightest offence or causing a moment’s ill-feeling.

It was left, really, to Liam and Zayn to be, not uneasy, but taken aback, by the Continental scene, where a gay club apparently meant as a matter of course feathers and glitter and drag and slap. If this, they rather thought, were what the Continent expected of gayers, _they_ simply happened to be two boringly straight blokes who slept with men: well, one man each, nowadays and hereafter. It was all very un-British.

 

* * *

Liam’s nerve probably broke first, but it was Zayn who grasped, with no small relief, the nettle, as the evening seemed to show no signs of winding down. He gathered the others together – hand firmly in Liam’s and both jumpily alert to stray hands and blatant propositions – and herded them towards an exit (‘Harry! Is that body-paint – well, where _is_ your shirt? No, Louis, we are _not_ going back to find it … Niall, come _on,_ there’ll be plenty of people want to buy you rounds tomorrow, too...’).

It was moral victory, felt Zayn, on his part and Liam’s both, that they’d neither abandoned their friends, nor, having got them outside, left them to find their own way to the hotel and simply done a runner.

* * *

It was their good fortune that Ajax’ official account was to tweet kindly things about them and their visit only after they had gone to ground the next day. The paps were to be, in the good old phrase, foiled again.

* * *

Had it been left to Liam – which, Niall had made subtly and inoffensively clear the night preceding, it wasn’t wholly going to be – they should have proceeded directly to Elsinore, or rather to Copenhagen, immediately, and quite likely by air: for that leg of the journey had nothing to do with cricket, or Louis’ football ambitions, and was not to involve a meeting with anyone from FC København or a tour of their ground, but was, rather, All For Zayn: a subject on which Liam could rarely be reined in.

Zayn, naturally, was asleep; and so, after the night out, were Haz and Louis. Liam had, equally naturally, roused at his usual hour and done his invariable training, and, finding his Zayn still peacefully asleep, had changed the note he’d left on the pillow (‘gym & run, love’) for a newer (‘bkfst – come if you wake up – love you’). To his utter want of surprise, he had found Nialler already there and already eating, wholly unaffected by the night out and perfectly ready to eat a second or third breakfast to keep him company.

And to teach Liam the art of compromise.

What time an adorably sleepy, adorably grumpy, and adorably tousled Zayn joined them, making blind, grabbing motions after caffeine, Liam and Niall had agreed another day and night – a _quiet_ day and night, _in_ – in Amsterdam. They had considered and rejected the night train, the sleeper, to Copenhagen, as it seemed a pity to miss scenery; and that left the eleven hour journey by day, via Osnabrück and Hamburg, and of the two departures, 11.1AM for a 10.13PM arrival seemed a better bet – as Zayn was even now demonstrating – than leaving at 9.1 in the morning.

That being settled – by then, even Haz and Louis had wandered down to brekker, bleary but curiously Zen-like of mood (Liam, Zayn, and Niall couldn’t be arsed to make the obvious point) – the day was free. Zayn took it on himself to suggest that Louis not consider wandering De Wallen or any part of the _Rosse Buurt,_ the famous red light district, and rather regretted it when a gently reproachful Harry, clearly offended, began banging on about exploitation and how they’d _never_ contribute to it by going and gawking....

Niall, perfectly ruthlessly, stopped that short by suggesting that he, Haz, and Louis go buy Haz a new and replacement shirt before going their separate ways, and rose immediately upon the suggestion – command, really – with a wink for Zayn and Liam, thus released to their own devices.

Amongst the many amenities of which Amsterdam is possessed are bicycles, canals, canal boats, and museums. Amongst the many other interests to which Zayn, pursuing his dreams, had given short shrift, were an abiding interest in art, in music, and in history. And Liam was learning the art of compromise, and, when it came to Zayn, was doing so with loving willingness.

A bit of quick map-work, and they were off, first, at Zayn’s insistence, to the Anne Frank House, and after, hopping on and off the Canal Bus and taking time to bicycle for stretches, around to the Golden Bend; after which, with time only to make a good fist of one museum, they presented themselves at the Rijksmuseum, promising one another to come back – ‘honeymoon?’, whispered Liam, which made Zayn to breathe shallowly for a good three minutes – for the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk, and indeed the Rembrandthuis.

Typically, no one knew where Niall had slipped off to after he’d left Haz and Louis shopping in PC Hooftstraat – Zayn and Liam had run into Haz and Louis as the former were departing and the latter entering the Anne Frank House, and had since waved to them in the Golden Bend – but they’d heard a well-known voice singing ‘The Fields of Athenry’ as they were headed for the Museumplein, and had overheard someone’s complaining of the busker covering the Niall Horan hits ‘Rock Me’ and ‘Don’t Forget Where You Belong’ near the Floating Flower Market on the Singel: ‘Every bloody Irish sod abroad insists on covering Horan, and they never do it worth a damn’ (which had forced Liam and Zayn to stop their bikes, lean on one another, and laugh until they quite literally cried).

It was easy, though, to forget the others, and all the world, in the Rijksmuseum. There were van der Schardt’s busts and Goltzius’ engravings, which exerted a powerful fascination upon them both; there was Helst, and Steen, and, naturally, Rembrandt, which Zayn could have lost himself in for weeks; there was Hals, to whose work Liam was immediately drawn. But it was the discovery first of Cuyp, and then of Vermeer, which knocked Liam for six (or, rather, he being a celebrated batsman, clean-bowled him).

‘Now, that,’ said Liam, quietly awed, ‘is the sort of painting a man’d like to have in his house.’ He was standing before Vermeer’s _Het Straatje, The Little Street._

A tall, thin, supercilious Continental, overhearing him, snorted and sneered at once.

‘Did I say sommat wrong?’ Liam’s voice sounded, superficially, quite mild and pleasant.

The man looked at him, loftily (which was no mean accomplishment, as, tall though he was, he was not very much taller than was Liam): taking in his sporty figure, his cavalry twill trousers, his scuffed boots and comfortably worn flannel shirt and his waxed jacket. ‘There are,’ said he, severely, ‘no undisputed works of Jan Vermeer van Delft any longer in private hands, unless one of the missing works at last is found. If one were on the market to come, it would much money cost: more than you – or indeed I – can imagine.’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ said Liam, equably. ‘My name’s Payne. I play professional, first-class cricket, for Warwickshire. It’s not quite being a Premier League footballer, but the pay packet’s none so bad.’

Zayn smirked evilly at the arrogant Euro-bugger.

* * *

As it transpired, Niall also had had his adventures (and played tig with paps, to his delight. Zayn suspected that it was this sporting interest, as much as the remunerative mystique occasioned by his doing only studio albums and never touring, which had persuaded Nialler to make a mystery of himself): amusing and successful adventures, or so he indicated when they all met for dinner, their day of sightseeing done and dusted. (Harry had acquired three new shirts, a scarf for Louis, who was abominably smug about it, an astonishing quantity of flowers – also for Louis –, and several quite evident love-bites that they could see even whilst he was fully clad.)

More than that, Niall refused to say, although he broke into laughter at intervals for no evident cause, insisting when pressed that they’d know soon enough.

 

* * *

The next day, as the train pulled away from the platform at Amsterdam Centraal, bound for Copenhagen ‘H’ through the history and scenery of the great swathe from Deventer to Lübeck to Roskilde, Niall adverted his friends’ attention to the fact that the Beeb had the story of his adventures of the day prior, as did the _Grauniad_ and _The Times;_ and the _Torygraph_ not only had the story, but was having fun with it, as the Web version clearly showed.

 

> … _Amsterdam yesterday. A young Irishman was busking beside the canal, near the Flower Market, when he began to play and sing songs by the Irish-born, London-based singer-songwriter, the elusive and reclusive_ _ **Niall Horan** _ _. Unfortunately (for one of the parties), an executive with_ _ **PRS for Music** _ _, the copyright collection society, happened to be in Amsterdam on business, and overheard this impromptu performance. Apparently regarding the_ _ **aggressive enforcement** _ _example of the US-based_ _ **ASCAP** _ _as being one to emulate_ _, the PRS executive summoned a nearby KLPD constable, and set out to determine the busker’s identity so that he could be prosecuted or made a defendant in a civil action to secure the fees for this ‘unlicensed live performance’.  
>  _ _As it happened, the PRS executive was not alone in finding himself in Amsterdam on that very day. Mr Horan himself was holidaying in the city, with his friends the up-and-coming chef Harry Styles, football prospect Louis Tomlinson, –_

‘Nialler!’

‘Ah, there’s no harm to it – names, but no pack-drill all the same.’

 

> – _the academic Zayn Malik, and Warks cricketer_ **Liam Payne** .

‘Oh, _you_ get a _link,_ ’ said Louis, rolling his eyes.

 

> _On occasion, writers and artists grant free live performance licences to certain performers or for certain categories of performance; and, on occasion, there’s no need to do so._  
>  _The Man From PRS bore down upon the busker, demanding his name and address. Cheekily, the young Irishman demanded the same of the executive, and asked what business it was of his what was being sung. The Man From PRS – perhaps we may call them ‘the Imprudential’ – gave, by all accounts, a full, frank, wide-ranging answer that was a call to arms for the protection of copyright, and again demanded that the busker identify himself._  
>    _The young Irishman did so, producing his passport and other identity documents._  
>  _He was, of course, Niall Horan, singing his own works for a lark.  
>  _   ‘ _I suppose,’ said Mr Horan, ‘it’s a good thing that PRS are so solicitous of my rights. Of course, I’m demanding they sack the f–––r all the same. If I’ve anything to say about it, he’ll never work in the industry again. I didn’t like his attitude.’  
>  __PRS for Music did not respond to this newspaper’s repeated requests for comment._

Every paparazzo in Amsterdam was gnashing his teeth at this missed chance.

 

* * *

Liam and Niall evinced a strong tendency to arrange the lives of others (for their own good, of course, and in the best interest of those others), and were coming to communicate almost wordlessly. Be that as it might, Zayn found himself, shortly after they passed through Ibbenbüren, without a Liam to lean upon as he re-read for the thousandth time _The Tragicall Historie of HAMLET, Prince of Denmarke,_ and indeed torn away from that ultimate tale of power politics dressed as a ghost story. Nor could he regret it.

‘Hi.’

‘Oh, come _here,_ Tommo. You are _not_ meant for a quiet mouse.’

Louis burrowed into his side.

Zayn squeezed his shoulder. ‘And, no, you haven’t been ignoring me, unless you call what I’ve been doing the same.’

‘Missed you, though, Azzi. Even though … Harry. _Jesus._ ’

‘Talk to me, bro. Talk to me.’

* * *

After they changed trains in Osnabrück, and persisting after the change at Hamburg until they reached Oldenburg and the last lap of bridges over the sounding sea, Liam left Zayn largely to catch up with his old friend, and himself got to know Harry as that lad and Niall reaffirmed their own bond.

‘... a restaurant, a _decent_ one,’ said Harry, as the train sped through the wintry dusk. ‘But not London. Actually, I suppose it depends now on where Lou-Bear ends by playing.’

‘All right,’ said Liam, who had, as had Niall ages before, already decided to invest despite Harry’s not asking them to or suspecting they might. ‘But what sort of place – if everything were just as you hoped and dreamt?’

 

* * *

‘... the fooking terraces. They _still_ throw bananas on the pitch, if they can manage, when a Black player comes on, God knows what they’d do for me – dildos, probably, the bastards.’

 

* * *

‘... bananas aren’t used enough. And why is it that dill isn’t a fashionable spice any longer in _savoury_ dishes? It’s quite a posh sp- – you know what I meant, Nialler, stop that –’

Patiently, Liam once again tried to shepherd Harry to the stile. ‘But the place itself, Haz. What’s your dream?’

 

* * *

‘... Man City seems set on winning Stonewall Awards, but, God, facing United in the City Derby every year.... I’d not dare sign with the Villans even to reach the Premier League, not now I know Liam’s an Albion supporter unless Wolves ever reach the top tier again – but what’s the use, it’s all _dreams_ now, I’ll be lucky to get signed in League Fooking _One,_ as an out player –’

* * *

‘An old coaching inn. All the food locally sourced, and local dishes, real English food: Hairy Biker stuff, really. Real ales, too....’

* * *

‘... do you think I’d be any good at waiting tables, Zaynie? But Harry wouldn’t sack me even if I were, and that’d make our whole relationship false....’

* * *

‘... some place in the countryside, near enough to Lou’s family and mine....’

 

* * *

‘Tommo, seriously, belt up, like. You are going to make it. _Thik hai?_ Okay? There is _nothing_ my Tommo can’t do – and now you’ve Haz beside you, hey? C’mon, _bhai,_ chin up....’

* * *

‘I know, it’s a really stupid dream, yah? And – dull: not like the Premier League or the Ashes or being a rock star or doing something _really_ important that influences future generations like teaching. And it’s silly, a cook with a glorified pub wanting a star footballer –’

‘Or a teacher and a cricketer? It’s not a silly relationship, Haz, and it’s not a daft dream anyroadup, your inn, sounds bostin’ to me. And I’ve every faith in both of those dreams, and your making ’em come true.’

‘Ah, now, Hazza, listen to the man, do: be said by him. It’s yourself and Tommo I’d back at any odds.’

* * *

After much debate – between Liam and Niall: the others were beginning to feel the least bit left out, and Harry was already pining for whatever kitchens might be in the fjords across the Øresund – they’d decided to put up at the Hotel D’Angleterre. Liam and Niall both believed in luxury. (Mind, Niall was hilariously vocal in denouncing the fact that there was always a Hotel d’Angleterre, anywhere one went, and never a Hotel d’Irlonde, it was chronic, it was, ojjius, _cat...._ )

And on the horizon of the morning next, upon the battlements, revisiting certain glimpses of the moon, there awaited them upon the morrow Elsinore.

* * *

‘Prior preparation and planning prevents piss-poor performance’: the Army maxim had long since percolated into professional sport, and no one had embraced it more than had Liam. And not only at the crease, but in life – something he meant to impress upon The Tommo for his own future good.

This jaunt to Helsingør … well. Italy, when they reached there, should combine in large measure Louis’ interests and goal and purposes with Zayn’s (and, no doubt, Harry’s, now, as well: the Italians might not be hugely competent at governance, or banking, or economics, but they damned well knew food even better than they knew football). This, though, this bird-haunted, sea-girt destination laved in light, beneath the crow-stepped gables and lancing spire of St Olaf’s cathedral church and the battlements of Castle Kronborg … this place, this point, this port, this objective he had set them, with its flavour of Crail and its light like Tobermory’s, was wholly for his Zayn.

Liam himself, had he come alone, had Zayn yet been a sweet memory of one kiss six years gone, should have found himself, thought he, at the museums dedicated to shipbuilding and industry and technology, just as Harry (thought Liam, shrewdly) should have wandered the funky, modern gallery of the _Kulturværftet;_ The Tommo should not, suspected Liam, have come at all, and Niall, had he happened to arrive by whim and accident, should quite likely have gone to ground in the wine museum.

But Kronborg was Zayn’s: the Shakespearian setting made a Renascence show-piece, fit scene for a Renascence prince imagined at the Globe … and scene and setting for a beautiful, _zain,_ prince, a _malik,_ a fit prince, a Renascence man with a Renascence mind: _his_ Zayn. _His._ And Liam had moved Heaven and earth to make that happen had it been needful so to do.

The morning was clear and cold as a peal of bells: a nipping and an eager air. The throng of tourists and trippers, bovine herds drifting trodden paths and tracks, herded by guides and guidebooks, had not yet roused and wandered in any large numbers to the castle. No doubt heavy-headed revels and swaggering up-spring reels of the night prior had kept no few of them abed, and others were not prepared so early to walk abroad in a shrewdly biting air. Angels and ministers of grace then had defended them his morning, leaving them largely in undisputed possession of the platform where they watched, and making it a more removèd ground.

And on that stage, in black, the figure of a man: the glass of fashion and the mould of form. Greedily, Liam drank in the sight, giving his Zayn space to take all in, to run over in his mind the words and lines, survey the battlements, recall the high and fair poetic language which but dressed as cerements now burst the deadly duel, the heart of Shakespeare’s play of politics, the show of violence; himself content to marvel and to watch, heart aching, full of love beyond all hope. _He_ was not prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be, thought Liam: a mere attendant lord....

But Zayn, his prince in black.... So slim and fleet the eye did not at first perceive the strength, the power that was in him, coiled, lithe, in width of shoulder and the springing line of grace and power wedded, whipcord, lean. The perfect face of course no one might miss, the liquid eyes as limpid as a doe’s, set liquid as brown peat-pools in the sedge and fringed with lashes as a mere with reeds. And then there was what only Liam knew, the perfect double-handful of an arse like crisp, taut apples, and the matching bulge that swelled a progress, starting night’s sweet scenes. But these were but the beauty of the day (though, Liam knew, Zayn’s beauty as he aged should only wax the greater, and refine): the bloom of youth, of bodily delight, was nothing worth when weighed against the soul and mind and heart and spirit of his Zayn, more beautiful and more lasting than mere looks. How he had merited this grace of love, Liam knew not, but simply returned thanks.

* * *

‘D’ you think,’ asked Harry, glacially slowly, ‘Our Liam’s thinking Zayn is really Hamlet?’

Niall, his eyes reflecting the morning sun upon the waters, grinned. ‘He may be, Haz, he may be doing just that now, whatever. But Zayn’ll l’arn him better. He knows his own mind, does Prince Malik.’

‘So did Hamlet, according to Zayn,’ said Louis, rather unexpectedly. He’d chosen football with his eyes open, had The Tommo, and that had meant that other interests had perforce gone to the wall, but he wasn’t thick, and every now and again he chose to remind them of it. ‘All a duel with Claudius, wasn’t it, and feigning madness and indecision until he could strike. Like setting an offside trap.’

Harry frowned. ‘You can’t live like that, though.’

Louis simply looked at him until Harry blushed. ‘You _can,_ ’ said Louis. ‘It’s not pretty. You can do it, though, when the alternative is being bashed, or not having your chances you deserve, being baited for being queer – or Muslim, or both –’ they all three carefully didn’t look over towards Liam, let alone past him to where, as Liam watched, helplessly besotted, Zayn bestrode the battlements as a stage – ‘you _can_ do it.’

Harry drooped like a stricken flower.

‘Until,’ said Louis, firmly, ‘you _can’t._ You meet a lad, say, you want to spend your life with, and – that’s that, and if it means you can’t have the goals you thought you wanted, well, ’s life, innit. Some things are more important.’

Niall cut Harry off. He wasn’t thick either; and there is a sort of Irishman who has always had a strange affinity for Shakespeare. ‘That’s shite, Tommo: this idea, I mean, y’ must be closeted ta play. Y’ can have both, if only ye’ll _try:_ but there’s been too many have poured poison in the porches of your sleepin’ ears, told ye y’ mayn’t and can’t. Feck that, and sod the lot of ’em: there’s more things in Heaven and earth nor _your_ philosophy dreams of. It’s yourself says Haz is worth more nor football – and he is and he isn’t: if he’s worth givin’ up football for, which he is, he’s worth _not_ givin’ up football for, and provin’ that not yourself alone but any lad in such a kind can have both.’

* * *

 _His_ mum, reflected Zayn, was more than _seeming-_ virtuous: no Gertrude she, as witness her mingled fondness and exasperation towards Louis, and towards his friendship with Louis, who had i’ truth a truant disposition. She was faultless: but she _had_ had a regrettable tendency, even after he had come out to his family (his heart in his mouth and his guts teeming with terror: he’d nearly fainted when they’d stared at him as though he were daft and told him, firstly, that it wasn’t news to them, and, secondly, that it changed nothing), to press Ophelias, or their male counterparts, upon him.

And all this time, what he’d wanted was a Liam. The one and only Liam. _His_ Liam: something more than fantasy, as just as Horatio and as faithful; strong-armed Liam, _aux bras forts, fort-in-bras._

Liam.... In form and moving, how express and admirable.... With Louis about, no one tended to stare at Liam’s arse (or Zayn’s own, or Niall’s or Haz’, come to that): which was unwise of them, although Zayn preferred the masses remain in ignorance. If there were any slavering to be done over Liam’s arse, felt Zayn (and Zayn felt up Liam’s arse at every opportunity), Zayn intended he and he alone be granted that right and privilege. Get him out of his trousers, his jeans or trackies or chinos or twill – and Zayn _got_ Liam out of his trousers at every opportunity –, and a thing of beauty was revealed, a perfect swell of muscle matched by a magnificent swell at the front (Liam in black boxer-briefs was a thing of beauty and a joy forever, felt Zayn), something as perfect, if less noted and less noticeable, than those arms and shoulders, that chest and those abdominals....

Yet, reflected Zayn, mere bodily beauty – although Liam left every other lad Zayn had ever seen standing – was something Zayn could easily, he knew, find and command. Never mind clubs and bars: Zayn had been, to his acid displeasure however flattering such things might seem on the surface, propositioned on pavements and in libraries and, subtly, once on the way out of the mosque after Friday prayers (which had shocked him unutterably). Even his Liam’s sweet face, that masterful combination of childish nose and manly jaw, firm-set mouth and pillowed lips, furrowed brows and mild ox’ eyes, though it stole even into his happier dreams, was not what Zayn most loved in Liam: even these were, in the end, but the quintessence of dust. It was _Liam,_ the whole of him, the passion and the discipline, the optimism despite all the hurts, unscathed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the drive and the fire and the sweetness at the core, that made Zayn’s soul thrum like a plucked string and sound its clearest note.

* * *

Trisha, after a very nice conversation with one Karen Payne, rang up Jay, and began a serious discussion of rail schedules.

 

* * *

The morning was well advanced now; the trippers and the tourists had descended upon Kronborg. It may be that the sanctity does not depart from a place which has a _numen,_ a _genius loci,_ though sightseers come with guide-books looking over it; but the lads weren’t chancing it.

‘I don’t know,’ said Zayn, eyes shining, ‘what plans you three have for the rest of the day, but Liam and I are going back to the hotel.’

‘We are?’

‘Babe, this has been the best thing anyone’s ever done for me, and I am nowhere _near_ finished – I’ve not _begun_ – showing my gratitude.’

* * *

Niall, who had no shame, had equally no taste for playing gooseberry, and – went to ground in the wine museum before making his way to the _Toldkammeret_ to see what was the craic, and, more to the point, the ceol, if any there were thus early in the day. It was too damned cold for golf, that was certain.

Louis and Haz chose to return also to Copenhagen, leaving Niall in undisputed possession of Helsingør until he should decide to catch one of the coastal trains that ran every quarter-hour or so. Louis, knowing Haz’ preferences, had pretended – and overacted, rather – enthusiasm for museums and palaces, but Harry hadn’t been about to wear _that_ rubbish, and had insisted on something they could both enjoy: they were headed, upon reaching Copenhagen (by the train _after_ Zayn’s and Liam’s, as no one wished to see that amount of soppiness) for the Zoo, in Frederiksberg.

* * *

If Zayn had thought that Liam was done spoiling him, he was disabused of that notion well before teatime (although, as Louis smugly pointed out, to general hilarity, when the tousled and sated couple emerged giddily from what had clearly been a series of marathon sessions of ‘gratitude-showing’, if this were the sort of thanks Zaynie were returning Liam whenever Liam did something nice for him, Liam had every incentive to go on spoiling him. The Tommo didn’t so much as blink when Liam had thrown bread at him in response).

That Liam had planned for them all to go to the Tivoli – and that he and Zayn ride the famous observation, or Ferris, wheel, _Balongygen,_ and share the traditional snog at the apex of the journey, and the rest of them could do as they liked (as if Haz and Louis shouldn’t do precisely the same) – was so very nearly inevitable as to have been wholly predictable, was one thing. That he suggested that they first dine in Vesterbro was not: until they got there, to find that the infamously louche district had been radically made over, and that the restaurant to which they were bound was the only one in Copenhagen run by brothers from Karachi and serving Pakistani and North Indian food not made inauthentic for the Northern European palate. Zayn was radiant with happiness, gratitude, and blatantly obvious affection when they turned down Vesterbrogade and saw Al-Diwan before them, and Niall perked up happily (Louis and Harry alike also clearly were missing a proper tikka or jalfreezi); and after Zayn managed to step back from his irresistible embrace of his Liam, the latter ducked his head, blushing, and rubbed the back of his neck, muttering shyly about ‘nearest thing to a Balti house I could find’.

* * *

Liam’s voice was rough with strain and need. ‘Love, it’s not that I’d rather you smoked after meals, but – God, I’m near embarrassing meself in public.’

Zayn spoke indistinctly around a boiled sweet (although the Continentals weren’t a patch upon any English sweetie shop, dab hands though they might be a chocs). ‘I want summat to do wif m’ mouf, ’lways had a fag after meals.’

Liam swung him into a the doorway of a shuttered shop and gave him a far superior substitute to any boiled sweet.

* * *

The next morning – full of romance, in four instances, and refreshed all five by having found at last proper mixed grills and biryanis and kormas, with kulfi for afters – the lads boarded a train for Germany.

They were not, had they but known, the only ones Going By Rail. That same day, Trisha and Yaser, and Jay and her latest (and, as Trisha hoped and never once was so unkind as to remark, her _last_ ) husband, embarked for Sandwell and Dudley, via Doncaster and Birmingham New Street.

Geoff and Karen met them at the station.

‘Me wife, Karen,’ said Geoff, making the presentations. Trisha and Yaser had met Geoff six years prior; Karen had not accompanied him and Liam to the meet on that occasion. Trisha introduced Jay and Dan Deakin, with perfect grace and aplomb: a grace and aplomb Jay matched with dignity. (Jay knew perfectly well that it was not, actually, that Trisha disapproved – however well she hid it – of Jay’s marital history, although the ignorant and the superficial could readily make that assumption: she didn’t, really, nor did Yaser, any more than Jay looked askance at them; but there was a tension there which was not based on moral views, or class, or religion, however convenient those excuses, but which arose rather, and inevitably, from the sheer amount and quality and sort of trouble Louis had got Zayn into and Zayn had got Louis into over the years of their late adolescence. Both mums liked the other, at bottom, but neither could quite feel the other had done all she might have done to keep her bloody son from getting his best friend so comprehensively into scrapes and mischief.)

‘We’ve the freedom of Liam’s place,’ said Geoff, ‘when his sisters bay dog-watching and keeping the place from being burgled; there’s ample room.’

* * *

Almost seven hours to Berlin.... Niall suppressed a grin. He’d a wager with himself on how long the two couples could go without becoming utterly soppy. As he’d bet in five-minute intervals from the time the train left the station, he was fairly certain he’d win early.

* * *

 

>   
>  @Pukka_Payno:  
>  Major #Hamlettt day for my @zjmalik yesterday at Elsinorreeee (?sp) love you Z

The paps hastened to Copenhagen: too late. (Niall, knowing them of old and predicting their next movements, inly rejoiced.)

* * *

Even with traffic and all sorts, it was no long journey they had of it, the ways deep, the weather sharp – in the people-carrier (a sensible model: in fact, an Alhambra) Liam had bought for his parents – to Liam’s place. The mums were chatting earnestly in the back – plotting, thought Yaser, like three old girls on a blasted heath waiting for the Thane of Cawdor to wander past – whilst the menfolk naturally discussed cricket.

* * *

Niall was no longer bothering to suppress his grin. Sure enough, his mates had not managed to make it quite to Puttgarden before the sleepy, snuggling endearments had commenced; and what time they’d passed through Lübeck, all four were fast asleep, entwined each in the arms of his lover.

If this were the aftermath of the sort of night it suggested the lads had had, Niall foresaw an increased number of curries in their future on this jaunt.

* * *

‘Ah,’ said Geoff. ‘That’ll be Anne’s car – the chef’s mum. We managed to track her down, too, although Bobby Horan couldn’t come over from Ireland. Karen’ll take you all in, I’ll get the bags.’

* * *

 _Wonderful thing, mobile broadband,_ reflected Niall, as his comrades snored beside him.

* * *

‘Well,’ said Geoff. ‘Our Kids have made the news and no mistake. Comes of faffing about Europe with a pop star, I reckon.’

Anne smiled. ‘Oh, but Harry’s been doing that for years now and stayed under the radar. It’s adding a cricketer and a football prospect and an absolutely absurdly good-looking young teacher to the mix –’

Yaser laughed. ‘Dear lady, it is Niall Horan’s making a fool of that pompous executive that drew the spotlight.’

‘Aye,’ said Dan. ‘And I wonder about that. The spotlight, I mean.’

‘Oh,’ said Trisha, nodding. ‘Yes. Zayn’s old headmaster’s wife actually stopped me in a shop: convinced that Zayn was being recruited to SIS.’

Geoff smiled. Niall’s da mayn’t have been able to join them, but he and Geoff had hit it off very well, and had had a thorough natter over VOIP – including Bobby’s recollection of an unexpected word with the Gardaí. ‘Some folk do take a notion....’

‘As a loyal and patriotic Englishman,’ said Yaser, ‘I’d be delighted – if that were what Zayn wished to do, and Her Majesty’s intelligence services wished him to do so. Also – I don’t wish to be too over, but, really – as a loyal, patriotic Englishman, if they were to put Zayn on the strength, I’d be in tension. For if they were reduced to recruiting _Zayn,_ the country is in worse trouble than I suspect.’

* * *

 _The traditional Jolly Boys’ Outing,_ thought Niall, with a quiet chortle; _and why not? Those who weren’t already well on their way, well, They Were All Going To Be Millionaires...._ He had a surprise planned for his best mate, who slept on peaceably snuggled into Louis as if their sizes were switched round: Haz looked, frankly, like a Komondor who thought itself a lapdog.

Niall drifted away into waking daydreams of German blondes and German meals and lashings of German beer.

* * *

‘Seems to me,’ said Geoff, ‘as what’s happening be simple enough. The Government – well, they’m allus either frit or franzy, and yampy with it all the same: it’s how they bist. Lot of gawbies, Government be. But. I do rackon all this whisperin’ and werriting and blab’ren and blether bist simple enough. I don’t see Our Kid, whatever your boys are qualified to do, spyin’ and such for Crown and country. He bay thick, Our Liam, I don’t say that, but he’m nobbut any hand to spy but it were on another XI, and he’d not do _that_ because it bay cricket, that sort o’ gammiting bay.

‘No, what Government be after be seeing no harm comes to Our Kids abroad, I rackon, and if they’m getting special treatment, it bist on account o’ they bist special lads. Mind, there bay a parent doesn’t think theirs special, but Our Kids, things got ockerd on the Continent, ’d be in the newspapers, I dessay.’

‘I dare say that’s true enough,’ said Yaser, ‘with the Horan lad being a pop star and your lad being a county cricketer, and, no doubt, owing to Anne’s son’s being, I take it, famous in his own line. And of course Louis is on his way, I think, to becoming known. But Zayn? I do not think aspiring teachers are so watched over as a rule.’

Geoff and Karen exchanged a quick glance. It was hardly their prerogative to mention the precise nature of the relationship between Zayn and Liam if Zayn had not yet spoken to his parents of it. Twitter or no bloody Twitter.

Trisha, exasperated, put them out of their misery – and Yaser into his. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, dear. As the lads are travelling together – indeed, if Zayn were travelling only with Louis and Liam – of course they are being treated alike.’ It wasn’t in her remit to out Louis or Harry, either, if they weren’t already out to _their_ families, and she really had no idea if they were – although, from what Zayn’s last email had said, there was little hiding it, and Harry and Louis were quite clearly falling for one another as hard and as quickly as Zayn and Liam had done. ‘He’s not being singled out because of his religion or race.’

Yaser shrugged, with the air of a man who hopes the optimistic view is true, but has no intention whatever of wagering money on it.

* * *

Liam, although _very_ contented to doze a bit in Zayn’s arms, and to act as a pillow (and, in all senses, comforter) for his sleeping love, had not simply slept the hours away: he’d drifted in and out of wakefulness, whatever Niall might think, idly watching the scenery flick past and surreptitiously watching Niall’s fidgets and fond looks and occasional private chuckling.

In fact, Niall was grinning to himself even now. Liam prepared himself to support whatever Niall had planned if it were wise, help pay for it if it were practicable, and gently but firmly shoot it down if, as was by no means unlikely, it were sheer madness.

It wasn’t, as it happened. Niall was reflecting, as it happened, upon the convenient fact that if there were two things Haz’d be able to find in Berlin, these were potatoes, and cabbage.

* * *

Trisha was well aware that Liam’s parents were in the picture, and she was not inclined to shrink from the obvious. ‘Besides, dear. Now that Zayn and Liam are together, we must adjust to his being in the _reflected_ spotlight.’

Geoff and Karen visibly relaxed. And Jay sat up, with an air of decision, and said, ‘Oh, good, we’re all actually _talking_ about it. Anne, dear....’

Anne smiled. ‘Yes: I see a son-in-law in my future, and I don’t mean that daft young man Gemma was dating. We must all stick together, mustn’t we.’

‘Yes,’ said Dan, in unplanned chorus with Yaser; and then went on, solo, ‘and that’s what concerns me a bit with Horan and the spotlight. If the red-tops and the paps get themselves interested in his travelling companions … I don’t want Louis forced out, and his dreams dashed for it, simply on account of a celebrity’s friendship and a celebrity’s yearning for headlines.’

Geoof snorted. ‘“If”? Buggers are already interested, what with Niall being Niall and Zayn and Liam being openly together.’

‘I understand,’ said Anne, placidly. ‘But no doubt Louis is quite competent to look after himself?’

Dan spoke frankly. ‘Happen he was. I wasn’t there for most of it – things’d’ve been different if I had been, I tell ’ee straight. But he were all too good at it and all too used to it.’

‘My son’s problem,’ said Jay in counterpoint, ‘is that he sometimes persuaded himself he was, or could be, in love with one girl or another. And he’d make a fool of himself playing up to her. Now that he actually _is_ falling in love … my little Boo-Bear has _no_ talent for hiding his heart when it’s on his sleeve. He managed to closet himself before, when there wasn’t someone who mattered. But now? Not bloody likely.’

‘Harry’s much the same,’ said Anne. ‘I hope it doesn’t end badly, but – well, I do realise there are career issues for Louis, and Harry’d _never_ wish to cock that up for him. But … it’s sometimes part of growing up, isn’t it, even if it’s the part we parents, and we mums especially, always want to shield our children from. But we can’t keep them in cotton wool forever.’

‘I don’t blame this young Horan,’ said Dan: ‘not really. In fact, if he’s stuck with two couples making eyes at each other and acting like young love _will_ do, I feel sorry for him.’

‘I don’t,’ smiled Trisha. ‘They are all five extraordinarily good-looking lads: the internet thinks so, certainly, to judge by the reaction to the snaps they’ve put up of this jaunt, on Twitter and Instagram and Vine. I’m not sure that was wise, really, but there it is. And if a girl finds herself rebuffed by the other four....’

Yaser groaned. ‘Oh, yes. Let us not waste pity on a rich pop star who now has four wingmen. Jammy young sod.’

Geoff chortled – that had been Bobby’s own view when they’d spoken, as it happened – but swiftly grew serious. ‘Now, Dan. What I don’t see … Our Kid’s out, and he bay the only first-class cricketer as bist out. Bay it time football got caught up?’

‘Happen it is,’ said Dan. ‘But I ask you, Geoff. If it were other way about, would you have wanted Liam to be first to come out, and challenge things, and be pioneer?’

‘Nay,’ said Geoff. ‘But. Wouldn’t ha’ bin _me_ decision anyroadup. Our Kid’ve up and done it all the same, and damn the consequences. He bay, and never were, one for being kept in gammidge.’

* * *

Niall fully expected that they should, necessarily, visit the Olympiastadion, where Hertha BSC played. Why it hadn’t been destroyed seven decades before, he didn’t know. It had a history, all right.

And he had five custom-printed hoodies on order. He was monitoring the delivery arrangements to their Berlin hotel.

* * *

‘Seems to me,’ said Karen, with her usual common sense, ‘that whether the press pick up on these things or not, there’s two sets of future in-laws in the room, so it’s as well us get acquainted. I say, “in-laws”: whether they ever get sustificates or not. But it seems to me, too, that – come what may – with the lads abroad and it may be makin’ the papers, one thing is certain, that us parents want to show a united front.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Yaser, to general nods.

‘Well, that’s decided,’ said Karen, rising, ‘I think as it’s time us had our elevenses.’ And Trisha and Jay followed her into the kitchen with alacrity.

‘Hope as you bay hungry,’ said Geoff. ‘With them nattering – if your ladies can get a word in, way Karen do chunter on – it’ll be lunch afore we gets our vittles for elevenses.’

Neither Dan nor, especially, Yaser seemed at all fussed. They wanted – Yaser especially wanted – to talk cricket with the dad of a county player.

* * *

By the time they were midway between Grabow and Karstädt, even Zayn had awakened, and all five of the lads were chatting happily and looking out at the scheduled farmland reserves of Brandenburg, with its obstinately foreign churches and its fens and plains and pollarded trees that might so easily have been those of Ireland and the UK.

* * *

Email addresses and phone numbers exchanged, friendships forged, alliances made, and children gently mocked, the parents broke up after tea and departed to their several homes.

* * *

The lads arrived in Berlin on, naturally, the dot.

‘Where are we staying _this_ time,’ asked Louis, resigned to luxury.

Niall and Liam exchanged a grin. ‘Louisa’s Place.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Louis, ‘ _not_ some bird Niall’s pulled before –.’

‘No,’ sniggered Liam. ‘On the Ku’damm: an all-suites hotel.’

‘Which,’ said Niall, grinning all over his face, ‘is why we’re stoppin’ first at the market. All the suites have full kitchens.’ Harry burgeoned like a flower in a time-lapse – one with David Attenborough narrating. ‘Aye,’ said Niall, ‘whatever you like, so long as there’s colcannon with it.’

* * *

Harry had excelled himself; and the hotel was superb. The travellers had feasted, and not even Niall wished to go out. Harry and Louis, brilliant meal or no brilliant meal, had slept sufficiently on the train that it was inevitable they should be up all night, or a good part of it, indulging those appetites they could not very well sate at table.

Zayn, however, was a man who could take sleep almost as a man takes his lover, could rarely get enough sleep, even when presented with the alternative of Liam; and Liam was content that they should make a fairly early night of it, intimate without hours of athletic sex, Zayn wrapt ’round him in trustful peace, adorable in sleep (those ridiculous eyelashes, thought Liam, marvelling at the wonder who was his love), head pillowed on Liam’s chest, sleeping profoundly and lulled by the steady beat of Liam’s strong heart.

* * *

The next morning – a crisp, bracing Berlin morning, with that cold and sparkling air peculiar to Berlin – the proprietors themselves, doing the office of concierge, to the highly-distinguished Herr Horan a package delivered; and with it some words of advice dispensed.

They were, after all, in Berlin, not far from Saxony, and the former East. Not far, perhaps, enough....

An unwontedly thoughtful Niall, though he concealed it with his usual ebullience, insisted, once everyone was up and about, upon breakfast in his suite (Harry, naturally, taking the kitchen over); and took the opportunity to draw Liam aside, whilst Harry tried – and _there_ was a bootless errand for you – to show The Tommo the first thing about cookery as Zayn, with a soft smile, sledged them from the touchline.

‘I’m thinking,’ said Niall, with a gravity which startled Liam, ‘your Zayn wants t’ wear his Union flag cap whenever he goes out.’

Liam wasn’t thick; and he was the sort who followed the news religiously. ‘Pegida?’

‘The same, although they’re not here in Berlin in any numbers as yet.’

‘Bugger,’ said Liam, feelingly. ‘Do you think we’d best just go straight on to Switzerland and Italy?’

‘Nnooo....’ Niall was thoughtful. ‘It’s none so bad as that. The visit to Hertha and the Olympic Stadium’s yet on. And I’m surer nor ever, with the history of that ground, I did the right thing.’

‘Wait.’ Liam was no historian, but he’d always been the go-to for sport questions on quiz night down the local. ‘Christ, is that – it is, that’s the same stadium Hitler built for the ’36 Games. _Shit._ ’

Niall nodded. When _Liam_ was reduced to swearing.... ‘It is that. But haven’t I a plan? _Wait_ for it....’

Harry announced breakfast just then, so that Liam was required to possess his soul in patience for a time.

After, though, Niall gathered them together around a box, and reminded those who’d forgotten or had never known of the history of the Berlin Olympiastadion; and then opened the box and tossed them each something soft and fleecy. Hoodies. With, printed on the back of each, the famous photograph of Jesse Owens on the track, bursting with power and with speed.

* * *

‘Berlin? They are in _Germany?_ ’

‘Now, _jaan_ –’

Yaser was not to be calmed. ‘Neither fame nor money nor the British Government can protect them from everything.’

‘They’re being careful, dear, they do know what’s afoot. Shall I forward you the email, so you can read it yourself and now, without waiting until after work?’

‘Do, please.’

* * *

Niall had known that Liam should, fearlessly, have put Zayn in the picture as to all the concerns he and Niall had. (Zayn was by far the cleverest of them, but he had _no_ notion of current affairs: top lad, thought Niall, but he lived most of his life in earlier centuries, from the days of Beowulf to the time of Jane Austen’s heroines. His idea of modernity was Dickens and the Eliots – George and, for the truly up-to-date, that callow young hipster TS. Faith but the lad considered MacNeice and Betjeman and Auden to be wild young visionaries, he did.)

Niall had hoped that Louis and Harry had talked sensibly as well. Evidently, they had done – apparently their late night had actually (and who’d have thought it?) included _conversation_. In any case, although their behaviour at the stadium, as the Hertha BSC bigwigs gave them a tour (clearly suppressing any comment on the Union flag caps – Niall had on an Irish tricolour scarf – and Jesse Owens hoodies), left little doubt of just what Louis and Haz were to one another, nothing was _said,_ and they no more indulged in public displays than did Liam and Zayn. Less so, in that nothing _was_ said explicitly by Haz and Louis, whereas Liam was not at all shy of introducing Zayn as his partner: which raised, so far as Niall could see, nor hackle nor eyebrow.

All the same, they were glad to get back to the hotel, and the night-life – and restaurants – of Berlin called to them in vain (which was perfectly fine with Harry, who was taking the chance to cook in the way a man in a desert welcomes an oasis). When Germans began marching....

‘Do we go straight on to another country?’ Louis seemed more than ready to do so.

‘Tommo –’

‘Oh, get over yourself, Zaynie, darling, it’s not about _you,_ is it, _I_ don’t feel at _all_ comfortable with this.’

‘It’s up to Zayn all the same,’ said Liam, in a tone which brooked no argument at all. ‘I can make our excuses to FC Bayern.’

‘Y’ could,’ said Niall, ‘but it’s what I’m thinking, is, Bavaria mayn’t be so bad. No, now hear me out, I know historically they’ve been … problematic. And if it was _Jewish_ Zayn was, I’d think different, perhaps. The thing of it, though, is this, it’s Hesse and Saxony where this nonsense started and is strongest, though they tell me the Rhineland’s beginning to go the same way. But it’s mostly in the former East. Did not y’ the signs see on the Net, “Putin help us” and “No war in Europe” and the anti-Ukraine component?’

Liam really wasn’t thick. ‘So it’s started amongst old East Germans.’

Harry wasn’t thick, either. ‘Yah, they never have quite caught up … standard of living and all. Or integrated, themselves: no wonder they’re banging on about unassimilated – allegedly, allegedly – Muslims. Projection, yah?’

Nor yet was Louis thick. ‘Hmph. Wouldn’t surprise me, some old fooking Stasi types were stirring it up, and Putin paying for it under the table. Distract the Germans, right, and get a free hand, like, in Ukraine, and have support for whatever he does next to the Chechens.’

‘That’s what a lot of Germans is thinkin’,’ said Niall. ‘So, unless Zayn thinks otherwise, Munich might actually be the place for us, and give Borussia Dortmund and Eintracht Frankfurt a miss? And then on to the frontier before the Germans start up again.’

‘Love?’

‘Munich. But not until the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow, we stop skulking in the hotel; and, tomorrow, we go somewhere.’

‘And ye’ve clearly somewhere in mind,’ said Niall. ‘Which great writer or artist are we honourin’, then?’

‘Several – and millions of obscurer victims. I want to go to the memorial at Plötzensee.’

* * *

The next day was a solemn one enough. By noon, the skies had turned to dull, tarnished pewter, and the air smelled of snow: apt weather enough for the Plötzensee memorial to the victims of the Reich.

They were a silent and subdued five lads who returned to the hotel: a place in which they might have stayed in peace for weeks, had it not been for the chiming echo of history on the evening air. All the same, Zayn insisted they be undaunted, like four Englishmen and a wild Irish rover who feared nothing, and go out for a proper dinner.

Harry suggested Vau – or Monsieur Vuong. Liam had heard good things of the Grill Royal, which, although beloved of slebs (which fact commended it neither to Liam nor to Niall), held out the comforting inducements of thick steaks and sticky pudding; Zayn was indifferent so long as he might avoid the German obsession with pork; and Louis, although he’d hoped for something quiet and cheap, was very willing to be guided wholly by Harry – and not owing only to Haz’ expertise.

‘Ah,’ said Niall, whose first visit to Berlin this was not (and who knew the ways of the paparazzi, and that Hertha BSC should in all innocence soon tweet their presence, if they’d not done already), ‘fine ideas all, they are, but after the day it’s what’d warm us we’re wanting. Something bold and brash, it might be.’

Liam raised an eyebrow. He was beginning to be able to read Niall all too well. ‘Don’t tell me, there’s a New York deli or sommat.’

Niall’s grin flashed like Macheath’s jack-knife. ‘Better even nor that. What would you say to steaks or burgers, or wings, and chips with cheese and chilli con carne to them, and cheesecake, and all sorts? We’ll want cash, it’s all they take.’

Liam and Zayn exchanged a look. This might actually be just what was wanted. ‘Lead on.’

‘All right!’ Niall punched the air. ‘T’ th’ Bird!’

* * *

Objectively, it had been both a pleasant and a meaningful stop in Berlin. Yet there was thunder enough in the atmosphere that they were best pleased to be leaving, the morning after, for all the pleasures of good food and a superb hotel and a very correct reception at the football pitch.

They were very early at the Hauptbahnhof, eager to be off: so early, in fact, that Niall, arguing that Harry’d had a chance to cook and Louis’d been allowed on pitches, so what for was it not his turn to indulge himself, found a place to busk: one where the police shouldn’t descend upon him. And promptly gave the passing crowds, in (phonetically memorised) German and in the Blitzstein English translation, in alternating versions, a quick, cheeky version of _Die Moritat von Mackie Messer / The Ballad of Mack the Knife._

It seemed an appropriately ambiguous farewell as they departed on the Intercity Express, twenty minutes before the paps realised they were – or had been – in Berlin.

It was an ambiguous enough journey, in all truth. The ICE train ran through Leipzig – not, thank God, Pegida’s Dresden –, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, and passed Jena: Leipzig, the city of Bach and Mendelssohn, of Schumann, of Goethe’s student revels and Mahler’s premières – and the city also of Wagner, and of the _Kristallnacht_ destruction of Mendelssohn’s statue, and of the deportations to Theresienstadt; Nuremberg, with its Imperial history and its links to the first Hohenzollerns … and its millennium of pogroms, its Nazi rallies, and in the end, in its deservedly bombed-out ruins, its trials; Augsburg, the Augustan camp established by Tiberius and Drusus, the scene of finance and religious reform, the birthplace of Leopold Mozart and of the elder and young Holbeins: and the barracks of the Kaiser’s and then of Hitler’s forces and the site of a sub-camp to Dachau; Jena, the seat of learning and of its perversion, the town where Schiller was wed … and which gave its name to one of Bonaparte’s fatal, Pyrrhic victories, which made him by his own success the catalyst precipitating the unification of the petty German statelets into two Reichs in succession which threatened the freedom of the world – and which, inflating Bonaparte’s inherent overconfidence, led him relentlessly towards his Nemesis, his Only Original Waterloo, where he faced British troops and an Anglo-Irish commander, and was utterly defeated.

And all this to reach Munich: NSDAP headquarters, site of the Beer Hall Putsch, _Hauptstadt der Bewegung_ and metonym for ignoble appeasement; home to Mann and Brecht yet also the city to which Dachau was appended; site of the 1972 Olympic massacre.

 _Don’t mention the war...._ Germany repeatedly sought a trajectory that should leave the crooked course of the _Sonderweg,_ break the bonds of its dark history; yet whenever it seemed – _München mag dich_ – it should at last achieve escape velocity, something like Pegida arose to drag it back. Beer and bangers and buxom Bavarian wenches could not wholly hide or efface the skull beneath the skin.

* * *

_To be continued..._

 

* * *

 

 


	2. This is your real destination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the road goes ever on, and leads home at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have referenced herein certain recent matters of history. Some may be upset by them. Such is the nature of life, which art imitates.
> 
> I have changed only one event and that only as to its time, moving the date of a press conference forward by a day: a change purely dramatic and wholly immaterial.
> 
> Also, do please note that, owing to one passage, the rating has gone up.

* * *

 

He looked down, with a smile, at the pupils – those to whom he’d first spoken, and those trotting up in expectation of – not, surely, pearls of wisdom? He smiled, partly at them, partly at the masters and adjuncts now gathering with their own pupil-satellites: Haz, and Louis, and Nialler, and of course the Skipper, England’s Own Liam. He smiled, as well, partly at his own memories.

The Headmaster strove, always, to emulate the head at the first school at which he had served, in his salad days, as a recently fully-qualified teacher (four years had not a veteran made). It had been late November, and Liam had been half a world away from him. _It’s the price...._

The head, bless her, had taken note of the eight-hour difference in times even between GMT and Perth, let alone the eleven hour difference between Brum and Melbourne, and she had forthwith arranged – over his protests – her newest teacher’s schedule accordingly. More, she had further arranged that the upper forms’ English lessons, and History lessons, and several other lessons, all gathered together in the sport hall, ostensibly – he had admired the head’s sheer cheek – to listen carefully to the TMS podcast and write essays on its relationship to English pastoral, colonial and imperial history, or whatever other excuse, tailored to whichever lessons were being replaced by this, the old girl had conjured up.

She’d been brilliant, had the head – she was not a Dame for nothing – and it had been, for her most newly-joined teacher, a brilliant day.

He could hear it now in memory as clear as ever: the Ashes, in Australia, with both Blowers and Aggers taking a turn in the commentary box.

‘... a serene matutinal scene at MCG, quiet as a nun, although hardly, I should think, in the dressing room, after the fall of that last wicket, cheaply enough and, really, simply sheer bad luck.’

‘And now Liam Payne – not long capped for England, and very much a debutant in a _tourist’s_ Ashes, although his 2015 home debut marked him as a coming man – comes in to face the bowling, for his first time in Australia.’

‘And quite airily, too, with the iconic grace of a red, London bus. Really a lovely lad – unless of course one is bowling to him – and with that stately calmness to him, especially marked since he found his own equally lovely lad, you know. I may say that Australia have set their face – and the bowler is beginning his run-up –’

‘Abbott comes in, he bowls to Payne, and – oh my! He’s given that a powerful knock –’

‘– And it soars higher than a seagull towards the – it _is,_ it _is_ over the pavilion, a truly towering six, my word, and a stroke which seemed positively casual did it, a very classical batsman is young Master Payne, my word, Aggers –’

‘And again Abbott comes in, full and wide, outside the off stump, and Payne leaves it coolly alone. It is good to see Sean Abbott soldiering on, after the terrible tragedy so very early in his career … he bowls again, it’s – and Payne smacks it through cover for a superb four! This has all the makings of a classic duel....’

A brilliant day.

‘... Australia have set their face, quite rightly, against any sledging of that sort, just as England shan’t dream of sledging Sean Abbott over the Phil Hughes tragedy, you know, and I do hope England supporters will go and do likewise, there have already been a few mutters amidst the Australian supporters directed towards Payne: you really must wonder if they’re aware of what some of their own forebears may easily have been transported for....’

‘Blowers!’

‘Oh, my dear old thing, it’s a simple statement of fact....’

Nor had the head been seeking merely a pretext with those essays. In fact, the best of them, on the English side at least, on the persistence of pastoral, had been the work of a young lady who was now well on her way to an MLitt at Oxford.

‘... and that’s – it’s – another soaring six, and that is Liam Payne’s maiden Ashes century, he just missed one several times in the last Ashes at home, being thrice out in the nineties, twice through the incaution of his batting partner seeking extra runs; he stands now at 105, never a trace of nerves in the nineties, ice-water in his veins, I must say I’d prefer a good Côtes du Rhône in mine, dear boy, but never mind, that’s his hundred, and England are now on 207 for three, and this new partnership, since the third wicket I don’t know how long ago, stand at 149 –’

‘And Australia have brought Sean Abbott back in to resume the duel. A fullish delivery and a defensive stroke, and Liam Payne puts his fourth-wicket partnership to 150.’

‘And with a masterful casualness, I must say. You’ve met his partner?’

‘Zayn Malik? Yes, indeed: a really lovely chap, a teacher in – is it Walsall, now? I think it is – and that just misses the mark, and Payne allows it to go harmlessly past.’

‘Yes: a pity, really, this time difference, I can’t imagine a schoolmaster being able to sit up to all hours to listen, and then teach the next day, although I really must say that’d’ve explained several of _my_ masters at school –’

‘Payne is still at the strike, Abbott bowls a tricky bouncer – and Payne flicks it over and past the wicket-keeper with a scoop, a Marillier, good heavens, I’ve never seen a bouncer handled that way and there was _no_ chance for any fielder, it’s as if Payne has eyes in the back of his head – I suppose Zayn Malik could use the same, as a teacher, if pupils are what they were when I was one –’

He’d been as excited as the children, listening.

‘And it’s the last ball of this over, to Payne, and – a square cut off the back foot, and it screams past square leg to bounce as the fielder coming in from deep forward lunges hopelessly, and it’s over the rope for four! There’ve been comparisons to Freddie Flintoff from the earliest days of Liam Payne’s career, but my mind certainly goes back to 1981, watching this....’

‘Oh, absolutely, although not an all-rounder like Freddie or dear old Beefy, Payne at the crease really does look like nothing so much as the young Ian Botham; and now we’ll see how Ben Stokes does against the Australian bowling – hold on, it seems, yes, it’s been decided to take a drinks interval now, and my word don’t they want it out there, except I think Payne, who seems not to have so much as sweated a drop through this....’

It was, it turned out, the job of a headteacher not merely to din facts into young minds, but to make days _memorable._ As that day had been.

‘Well, Abbott did all he could for as long as he could do it. The new man with a ball no longer new must face up to Payne now. Oh. Dear. That … well, to mention one of Liam Payne’s old friends, when it came to line and length that had the length of Chef Styles’ hair, and about as much line. Irwin faces Nemesis once more – and that’s the double century, two tons, with a four that was very nearly a six, sent off like a low-flying missile through the fielder at long on and just failing to carry the rope!’

‘A reasonably innocent ball, that one, much improved, but my word but it was flogged as if it were naughty and Payne the head beak – oh, _do_ stop it, Aggers –’

That last had been rather more memorable than intended, recalled the Headmaster. He could smile about it now; he had perforce smiled then; and Liam, once home once more, had made him not only to smile about it, but to enjoy the scenario the unintended bit of bawdiness had conjured up.

All the same, that, also, was – had been; _remained_ – a lesson for headmasters.

* * *

‘Imagine,’ had said Louis, ‘ _had_ we all gone on to try – second time for Big Payno – for the X-Factor. One of us might have got through; Christ, one of us might’ve been supporting McBusted in Denmark the other month.’

Niall, who had written for and was friends with the lads of McBusted, had replied that they’d’ve _all_ had to have got through, so they should, himself not willing to be on large stages without he was part of a group, and what for would they not have been made a boy-band; and the convo had become largely general, with Zayn – and Harry – maintaining that in any universe, Zayn and Liam, and The Tommo and Haz, should have somehow found one another in any case.... There was one thing, though, which Liam had said, not altogether jokingly, which had cast Zayn into a thoughtful, though not a sombre, mood: that he quite liked McBusted as he’d quite liked McFly, but it seemed to him that Harry’s music career – Judd’s, that was, not the notional career posited for Hazza in an alternate universe – seemed to him a waste of a fine cricketer. (He’d added that he felt the same to be true of Gary Lineker, which had set The Tommo off an a rant which was not yet ended.)

The thing was, reflected Zayn, that it might conceivably have happened (Harry and Louis were now exclaiming over the coincidence that both had been at the same McBusted concert, in Brum back in May, and what were the odds, it was Fate, _Fate_ they told them...); and yet, he sensed that none of them should really wish that musical fantasy, or speculation, or call it what one might, magically to come true, or to have come true. He, certainly, wanted only two things in his life, and had – magically – achieved one of these already (who was sitting next to him, smiling gently at the other lads as they argued); and was on the cusp of achieving the other: teaching. Huge stadia all over the globe, filled to capacity with screaming fans, were a massive part, certainly, of Louis’ vision of _his_ future, but only, really, if he were on the pitch, not on a stage. Niall could easily have just that if he liked, at this very moment, simply by stretching out a hand; but he as clearly did not wish it.

‘Ah, Jaysus, but y’ don’t know what it’d be like, y’ don’t – alt’ough y’ will, even in sport, soon enough, and Payno already if he weren’t too humble t’ search his own name on t’e Net. If t’e label’d closeted ye, and if I know labels, ’tis what t’e bastards’d’ve done, it’s beards y’ would be having, and publicists encouragin’ fans to assume it’s not wit’in ten feet of a bird y’ were but y’ were shaggin’ her, and all t’e same it’d be t’e _fan_ fiction y’ would be endurin’ on t’e Net, and _Tumblr,_ and manips and fan-art and porno mock-ups, and _pairin’s,_ and ships and all sorts … gay men and a few straight ones and most o’ t’e bi ones, and women o’ all orientations, writin’ about ye, sometimes well and most often poorly, but always writin’, and Americans and all sorts puttin’ y’ in stories. And for what but t’at t’ey fancy ye? T’e t’ings I’ve seen … Holy Mary Mother o’ _God_. Payin’ for pints in dollars in London pubs, and playin’ _rounders_ – “baseball”, it’s called – and Doncaster and Wolverhampton treated as wee towns full o’ folk from t’e American Sout’, by t’eir attitudes and all; armed PCs, and dyin’ of illness because y’ have not insurance and t’ey’ve never heard o’ t’e NHS, and eatin’ in “waffle houses” – sounds like t’e Dáil or t’e Parliament – and, Jaysus, t’e casual racism in t’e name o’ anti-racism Zayn’d get: oh, it’s chronic, it is, t’e shite t’ey come up wit’ – and y’ don’t wish t’ know what t’ey’d do to yer accents, judging aff what t’ey do t’ _mine_....’

As for Harry.... Well. One could only imagine the rider for backstage, had _Harry_ gone into music, alone or in a group: access to a complete professional kitchen, crates of bananas, Madagascar vanilla pods, ramekins, a culinary torch.... He’d be making crème brûlée and all sorts on the bloody tour bus, should Haz.

Zayn, tired of the wrangle about their hypothetical band name and how they’d come across in fanfiction and who should be the group’s leader and stand-out star ( _obviously,_ it should have been Liam), paused in his speculations to mention the Hazza Rider Clause, thus setting the three (Liam chuckling softly) off on another rabbit trail, like a pack of beagles with ADHD....

And then there was Liam. (Always, _always,_ there was Liam.) Had he gone back to dare Simon Cowell to do him over a _second_ time, he should, Zayn had no doubt, have forced his way to a solo win. And that … that should never have done. Oh, he’d be a star: no question. The brightest in the firmament. And everyone, not Zayn only, should have adored him, ached for him, _wanted_ him and even a moment of his attention. _Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars...._ Certainly everyone’s heart, not Zayn’s only, should have lain open to Liam as star.

And yet. And yet....

Liam – having, like Gary Lineker, been a stand-out in more sports than one – had come late to a decision and a choice, and late, therefore, to cricket (as Zayn now knew, he having obsessively made himself an expert on the career of the future co-parent of their children). He had never had the chance – too dedicated as he then was to securing an Olympic place as a runner – to go through the full England development scheme, to play with the Under-19s, say; he had been part of an intake at Loughborough, the ECB’s NCPC, in which he had been by some years the eldest, and had all the same spent only an abbreviated time in the programme before being called up, the Winter prior, to England Lions. (Zayn could not yet foresee the days when Liam’s having been older than other members of his Loughborough intake, and their regard for him and the consequent quality of that regard, should stand him in good stead as England’s skipper....) Had any further diversions lain in his path after he’d missed the Olympic cut on the track, he should never have become what he now was; and that, thought Zayn, had been a tragedy.

They were pulling into the Munich Hauptbahnhof now. He surfaced from his thoughts like a seal coming up for air.

‘... an apple and banana tarte tatin with a shortbread crust!?!’ Louis was torn between fond amusement and mockery. ‘ _Haz,_ that’s _mad_ –’

‘Ah, shut your own mouth, Tommeen, it sounds feckin’ perfect and I want to hear more –’

Liam coughed, meaningfully. ‘Dunno if you noticed, but we stopped moving. Owing to being at the station.’

* * *

They had not expected to be met at the platform. But they were. Two large men, with wary eyes and sweeping glances, each of them with long experience of the sergeant’s mess (or its Gaelic equivalent) stamped upon him, stood beside a lean, languid exquisite who, in whatever mufti, could only have been a former Guards officer, or perhaps a late ornament of Household troops.

Zayn and Louis exchanged a long and speculative look that was not without an element of dread.

‘Gentlemen,’ said the largest of the burly men, in tones which at once announced his people and his background (which was in fact precisely that which might have been expected, that of a retired _Sáirsint Complachta_ of _an tArm_ – 7 th Bn, to be exact). ‘Your fame precedes you. Mr Horan: my name is Higgins: Paul Higgins; and this is Paddy O’Brien. And the Honorary Consul, Herr Lejeune, wishes speech of you, if you’ve a moment.’ This was clearly mere politesse, and rather a command than an offer.

‘And HM Consul,’ drawled the languid young man, plummily, ‘should rather like the rest of you to call. Oh: m’ name’s de Clifforde-Meynell-Levett-Adair, late of the Blues and Royals, and – Uncle Robin sends his regards.

‘As my chief, Mr Heardman, and the Hon. Consul for the Republic, Herr Lejeune, wish really to speak with all of you – travelling together, don’t you know – we’ve agreed, ah, neutral ground: Mr Moeller has graciously allowed us a room, bless his little American socks. So, if you don’t mind? Königinstraße first, please, and then we can have you wafted to – where _are_ you putting up?’

Liam, who was taking this (as was Niall) wholly in his stride, answered. ‘The Bayerischer Hof – well, Montgelas, anyroadup.’

‘Oh, excellent,’ said the Hon. Peregrine Rupert Nigel Evelyn de Clifforde-Meynell-Levett-Adair, late Captain, The Blues and Royals (Royal Horse Guards and 1st Dragoons), as only an Hon. named Peregrine Rupert Nigel Evelyn de Clifforde-Meynell-Levett-Adair, late Captain, The Blues and Royals (Royal Horse Guards and 1st Dragoons) could say it.

* * *

‘Ah, not a bit of it,’ said Paddy, as they were driven to the US Consulate of all unlikely places; ‘Mr Higgins and I are down from Berlin and the Embassy ourselves – on an earlier train, now, don’t you be thinking we were surveilling you, nor yet guarding you lot – for the day.’

* * *

‘So far,’ said HM Consul-General with a smile, ‘you’ve done an _excellent_ job, evading the paps. I’ve rejoiced to watch it, frankly.’

‘And,’ added the Hon. Consul of the Republic, ‘they are compelled to be somewhat more restrained in this country than in some others.’

‘Which does not mean we are unmindful of the increasing determination of these … persons … to disregard your privacy; or, even without quite doing that, reveal where you are and what you are about.’

‘Is that a problem, really, though?’ Harry had a his Frowny Thinky Face on, which was making Louis melt visibly.

HM Consul-General looked at him levelly. ‘There’s no excuse, certainly, for the rise of Pegida –’

Herr Lejeune put up a hand. ‘There _is,_ in one sense, inexcusable though their _behaviour_ has been. There is an _excuse;_ there is no _justification._ When legitimate and responsible politicians and political parties, democratic ones, rule out as illegitimate, and forbid even the discussion of, issues with which the people are concerned, without attempting to engage them and show where they are mistaken or overreacting....’

‘Yes. Quite. The illegitimate, irresponsible, and undemocratic ones take it up, and the public are not inclined, after being snubbed by those meant to represent them, always to appreciate the distinctions – or what foreign influence may be behind the rise of the radicals. Let me say, rather, that the excuse for, which cannot justify the rise of, Pegida, was this. As you may know, Germany has a largish Muslim population, many of them ethnically Turkish. In early October, there was a clash in the streets between Kurds, who are of course at daggers drawn with the Turks in any case, and – it’s suggested – Salafist radicals, in Hamburg, arising from an anti-ISIL protest; in Celle, Chechens attacked Yazidis. I may add that the imam of the Hamburg masjid was utterly horrified by this.’

‘In this country,’ said Herr Lejeune, ‘the rise of _Straßenkämpfer_ is – unnerving.’

‘Both HMG and the Government of Ireland are, as you can readily imagine, rather worried that, if you _are_ papped, it might tend, as an unintended consequence, to jeopardise your security by revealing your location.’

‘In short,’ said Zayn, bleakly, ‘if I go back home, the others can continue on in greater safety.’

Liam’s _If you leave, I leave_ just beat the clamour of negation from the others, even as Mr Heardman was saying, ‘No, not at all, Mr Malik, and not in the least what we mean’, to Herr Lejeune’s obbligato of agreement.

‘You are none of you,’ continued HM Consul-General, ‘responsible for the lunacy of others. Nor for the role played by.... You deserve frankness, gentlemen; I shall be as frank as I am allowed. The role played by certain foreign governments.’

The lads weren’t thick; and Liam especially watched the news religiously. ‘Would that be a foreign government which’d like to see Turkey in tumult?’

‘Which has,’ added Zayn, ‘irons in the fire in Syria?’

‘And which,’ asked Niall, ‘has a flank in Chechnya?’

‘And,’ added Harry, ‘an interest in deflecting attention from Ukraine?’

‘And a deal of old agents in the East of this country,’ murmured Louis. ‘We thought about the Pegida cock-up on the train, you know. And we saw the snaps of the “Putin help us” placards.’

‘You thought well,’ said Herr Lejeune, visibly impressed. ‘In 1967, a generation was radicalised in Germany when a student, demonstrating in West Berlin against the visit of the Shah of Iran – it was at the opera; Mozart, which makes it worse yet – was shot by a policeman. The student’s name was Benno Ohnesorg. The plain-clothes policeman who shot him, and covered it up by falsifying the record so that he could claim self-defence, was named Karl-Heinz Kurras. He became to those radicalised by his act the symbol of all that was wrong about West Germany, and the West, and democracy: the swine who, like the Nazis of yesteryear, killed for a corrupt state.

‘He _did_ kill, as it happens – in an act of premeditated murder – for a corrupt state. It was discovered after Reunification, the _Wiedervereinigung,_ that Kurras had all that time a member of the _East_ German Communist Party been, and a Stasi agent.’

* * *

‘The safety of every UK citizen and passport-holder is in my remit,’ said Mr Heardman. ‘And of every UK resident, and particularly if that resident is one of our Irish neighbours: we after all share a Common Travel Area in distinction to the Schengen Area.

‘It is however specially my concern and duty to guard the safety of you five gentlemen, owing to your public profiles. And, yes, in one sense only, Mr Malik, owing to your religion and your paternal ethnicity – awful formulation, that, but you take my meaning. It is my duty that you not be harmed, almost in passing, as part of a propaganda coup, a disinformation operation, a destabilisation gambit, or any similar sort of a nonsense.’

Zayn nodded, a trifle grudgingly, but acknowledging the point. ‘It’s not the British Government’s fault the other side are, well –’

‘Cunts,’ said the diplomatic Mr Heardman, with precision. ‘Quite. And we don’t want you caught up in a demo in which, say, Chechens and Salafists, or the Kurds, come to that, claim you as one of their own, and Pegida sees you as the thin end of the wedge –’

‘Or the camel’s nose beneath the tent?’ Zayn also was capable of precision mixed with distaste.

‘Quite. And both sides are avid for martyrs, the injury – or worse – of whom they can blame on the other side. The Kurras method, really. We also don’t want you or Mr Payne gay-bashed –’

‘Or me and Harry,’ said Louis, firmly.

‘Quite,’ said HM Consul-General without batting an eye. ‘Or, as you say, Mr Styles and Mr Tomlinson. Or, for that matter, see Mr Horan kidnapped and held to ransom or some damned thing. The environment in Bavaria is, just now, rather less febrile than that in, say, Hanover, or the Saxonies, or MV – Mecklenburg-Vorpommern –; but that is a _relative_ distinction. What are your plans for this stay in Munich: other, of course, than FC Bayern Munich, the _Schlauchboot_ and the _Säbener Stra_ _ß_ _e_ training facilities?’

‘Ought we to cancel them?’

‘Not at all, Mr Styles. I should like to know, with my colleague, simply for your better protection.’

Louis wrinkled his nose. ‘So we’d have, what, bodyguards or summat?’

‘Whilst you’re in Germany, yes, if you’ll be advised by me. Do you really object strenuously?’

‘Who?’ The Tommo had all the directness Yorkshire could breed in a man.

Herr Lejeune smiled, encouragingly. ‘Paul and Paddy –’ Niall’s face brightened: it was always good to hear the accents of home when abroad – ‘are very good, very discreet. Wholly tolerant, as well; and of course highly skilled. They can certainly stave off the paparazzi, and guard against _unwanted_ autograph-seekers save two only.’

‘Which two?’ Harry seemed to have been startled into asking, and was clearly perplexed. Were there perhaps two famous, super-powered German autograph-hunters who defied all attempts to stop them, who abseiled into celebrities’ rooms and popped out of hedgerows, pens in hand?

Herr Lejeune chuckled. ‘Paddy and Paul, of course. They are inveterate seekers of autographs.’

Louis looked sceptical, even now, but with an air of being persuadable. ‘They’re neither of them Kevin Costner.’

‘And you’re not Whitney, darling,’ said Haz, as the diplomats and the other lads hid smiles.

Louis’ rejoinder put paid to their attempts: ‘No, me bum’s _much_ better.’

Zayn, although amused, cleared his throat. If the Larry Stylinson Show got once under way, they’d be there all day. ‘My plans, in addition to Tommo’s, are simple. I want to go to the memorials at the Olympic Park and the airport; and to Dachau.’

Herr Lejeune looked at once impressed, sympathetic, and – slightly – surprised; although HM Consul-General was nodding as if he expected no less.

‘I’m not saying,’ said Zayn, a little shyly, ‘that we Muslims are becoming the next Jews of Europe. For one thing, too many of my brothers of the _ummah_ hate the Jews and attack them: not many, of so large a number, but even one is too many. And there are more than one.’ He remembered his uncle and his father giving him a right bollocking, when he’d been seventeen and had bought a ‘Free Palestine’ wristband. They’d said Palestine wanted freeing, all right: from Hamas and the rest; and so far only the Israelis were doing that. After which, if they didn’t then withdraw, _then_ the rest of the world could barrack them. As it was, the situation was too much like J&K for their tastes, with, they felt, _Azad_ Jammu and Kashmir, and Pakistan itself, as Israel.... ‘But the similarities are getting too close for comfort.’

‘To speak unofficially for a moment,’ said HM Consul-General, ‘I appreciate your points: _all_ of them. Were there any other plans?’

‘Before Niall starts reeling off beer houses and restaurants,’ grinned Liam, ‘or Haz begins banging on about museums and churches and the English Garden, which I’d quite like to see meself, I think we’d always suspected we’d not have much time here but for FC Bayern.’ In an aside to Zayn which was not nearly as _sotto voce_ as he’d meant it to be, he added, ‘We’ll come back’: which had Louis giggling as Niall repeated it in a far too accomplished imitation of Schwarzenegger’s voice.

‘We do, though,’ went on Liam, ‘want to find a place Zayn can dine at.’

‘I don’t make an issue of –’

‘Love, I’ve been here before. _Everything,_ even the veal,has pork in it, including the pudding.’

* * *

Louis had finally been won ’round to the idea of having Paul and Paddy provide them with discreet security whilst in Munich: all it had wanted was the insidious, offhand musing by HM Consul-General that, when Louis should have become the brightest star in the Premier League, he’d have bodyguards and all sorts as a matter of course. (The FCO even now turns out, particularly in HM Diplomatic Service abroad, the subtlest and most Machiavellian of mentalities.)

Not that Liam wasn’t possessed of a certain low cunning of his own.

* * *

‘Where’s Nialler?’

‘Sloped off with his guitar case, and Paddy. Haz; Zayn, love: can the two of you excuse us for a tick? I want a word with Tommo.’

Zayn dropped a kiss on Liam’s forehead: knowing that if he did any more than that, they’d both become so wholly and lengthily distracted that Haz and Louis’d’ve long since vanished what time they came up for air. ‘’Course, babe. Come on, Haz, I saw a market a few tram stops away, and they’re clearly getting ready for the hols, like. I want something special for pudding, Chef: there’s your challenge. You can have a bit, too, Paul: whatever it is, it’ll be the best you ever eat....’

When their respective boyfriends were gone, Louis simply looked levelly at Liam. ‘You know Zayn’s the only one who calls you, “Daddy”: I’m not going to be lectured.’

‘No. You’re not.’

‘All right.’

‘The tour of _Säbener Stra_ _ß_ _e._ ’

‘Oh, do I need to _closet_ myself?’

‘Don’t sark, Tommo. When we left home, there wasn’t all that much time to arrange the first few tours. By this point, they’ve been long set up, all right? They’ll be fuller. Take a bag with your kit in: it’ll be bostin’.’

Louis’ mood changed. ‘ _Oh._ So I’ll be getting stuck in.’

‘Aye. And I hope you take notes. No, literally. I wish we’d’ve been able to arrange for drills at Ajax: the beep test and the heart monitors and all. The more you’ve to compare.... But FC Bayern trains similar, they do. I know I don’t know next anunst to nothing about football, compared with you and them; but I think I do know sommat about training.’

‘Yes, yes, Mr Muscles, I’ll concede that.’

‘So. Pretend you’re doing all this trip alone, you and Haz; and email me every time, while it’s fresh in your mind, what you’ve learnt, eh? Because we’ve a full day at the later facilities: at Juve, we’re being allowed to look about the Vinovo … and Real have agreed our having a complete immersion at Valdebebas.’

Louis, naturally, although all but visibly bouncing in his seat with sheer excitement, chose to play it cool, and deflect. ‘Oh, that’s easy: when I’m with Haz, I _do_ forget the rest of you are along. Who are _you,_ again?’

‘Tommo....’

‘Honestly, Payno, don’t be a shit, of course I’m excited. And. Well. _Thank_ you.’

‘You can thank me by taking them notes: I want you to knock ’em at Leeds, have management feeding from your hand.’

‘I know.’ Louis was unwontedly sober. ‘I mean it: thank you.’

Liam shrugged. ‘You’re me mate, and Zayn’s best friend, and brother, more or less.’ He grinned. ‘So I take it as you and Haz be goin’ well, then?’

The Tommo beamed. ‘Oh, _God,_ Payno, it’s.... He’s. Well, you know what it’s like. Love, and that.’

‘I do,’ said Liam, beaming back. ‘I do.’

‘I’ve. I’ve never _laughed_ so much in bed, even at the hottest bits – oh, do _not_ say a word about Hazza’s “hot _bits_ ”, damn you, you do talk a deal of shite – and, well. Who was that stupid sleb – you know the one, some girl-band wannabe – said it was a sign of a good relationship you could fart in front of your partner?’

‘Oh, I know the one you mean. Wosshername.’

Louis laughed. ‘Yeah. Well. Um.’

Liam’s face shone with the sudden realisation. ‘Oh! You’ve _bottomed,_ then!’

The Tommo was more The Tomato just then. ‘Yeah.’ He tried not to emit an embarrassed giggle, but that was past praying for. ‘Haz says I’m so bossy I’m doing from the top, but. Yeah. I didn’t realise … I mean, all that pumping … you _do_ fart after.’ He ducked his head, but even the tops of his ears were flaming. ‘And you know, I s’pose, he’s the one when he doesn’t even mock.’

‘Well, I’m sure he’s had the same experience, after all.’

Louis managed a leer through his blushes. ‘Oh, I saw to _that._ Gave him a right seeing-to.’

‘Have you – have you gone bare, yet? And _can_ you, safely?’

‘Have _you?_ ’

‘We can and we have done.’ Liam was wholly unblushing and unashamed. ‘Clean as a whistle, both on us, and. Well, ’s more intimate, like.’

‘Yeah,’ breathed Louis, his eyes the least trifle glassy. ‘Happen it is, though I don’t see how anything can be more intimate than what Haz and I have.’

‘You go at your own pace, Tommo. Allus remember that.’

‘Oh, we will. What we _have_ done, though, I’ve, well. Um. Let’s just say I’m thinking of starting eating more fruit, like Haz does.’

Liam reached over and ruffled his friend’s fringe. ‘You’re learning. I’m glad.’

Louis grinned.

* * *

‘Haz.... Just how much of this do you _need?_ Damsons, cherry jam, apple conserves, these other plums –’

‘ _Zwetschgen,_ ’ said Harry. ‘Louis’ll thank me. _Later._ ’

Zayn’s eyes went a little unfocussed at the implication. ‘Do you think this is enough for all of us, then?’

‘Planning on blowing Payno, Zaynie?’ Harry’s smirk was sinful.

‘Planning on mutuals, like. Take one from seventy, class....’

 

* * *

The staff at Kilians Irish Pub, on Frauenplatz, are renowned for their protection of their patrons and their patrons’ interests. And for their live music nights, from karaoke on Sundays to regular _céilí_ evenings.

They were polite but implacable, accordingly, when a busker attempted to set up at their very door. ‘You will forgive, please, but we have live music for our patrons, nightly.’

‘Tonight?’ The Irish busker seemed to be coolly amused.

‘Yes. So if you will move on –’

‘Well, but if I come back tonight, is there not a chance of a gig as part o’ your music night?’

‘For these, _mein Herr,_ professional musicians we have.’

Niall grinned, and presented his passport. Paddy, watching from his nearby coign of vantage, simply rolled his eyes.

* * *

‘You’ve _what?_ ’

‘Got a gig t’e night at t’e Irish pub on Frauenplatz,’ grinned Niall. ‘And it’s all of ye who’re coming along.’

‘This isn’t exactly keeping a low profile,’ frowned Harry, looking disconsolately at his apple.

‘It is not,’ said Paul Higgins. ‘It draws the hounds after Niall – who is accustomed to security. And leaves the rest of you to go tomorra, _peaceably,_ to the memorials Mr Malik is after seeing, and then to _Säbener Stra_ _ß_ _e_ and Allianz Arena where the paps cannot folly ye.’ Paul was playing it up for Niall, who had admitted to being homesick. ‘They may get a snap or two tonight down the pub – so be aware – but it’s what’ll quiet them.’

Zayn thought it over for a moment, and nodded. ‘I can see that.’

‘Of course y’ can, darlin’ boy,’ said Niall. ‘There’s nothing more persuasive than an Irish tongue – as many a lass can attest – and it’s a grand thing to hear again the accents of home.’

Louis slumped a little in his seat. ‘For you, maybe. The only English voices I’ve heard daily since we came here is this lot.’

Niall and Liam exchanged a glance. ‘Never,’ said Liam, ‘travel without resources.’ He put on his best cod-American accent, and chanted, ‘Gimme a “V”!’

Louis’ remark that _that_ ship had long since sailed was drowned out by Niall’s responsive, ‘Gimme a “Pay”!’ And the both of them then shouted in unison, ‘Gimme an “N”!’

Zayn looked up so sharply he might have wrenched his neck. ‘A VPN? And we’ve Wi-Fi –’

‘We do,’ smiled Liam, lovingly. And he and Niall proceeded to set it up, through the flat-screen telly and sound system in the room (they’d taken the entire third storey to themselves, after all: Niall’s treat, with a discount offered in exchange for a few tweets and a sleb endorsement, done discreetly). Liam opened his laptop and conferred briefly with Niall in an undertone before opening the iPlayer site.

‘Wireless first, I think,’ said Liam, who was missing home quite as much as anyone, for all that home was wherever Zayn might be.

They caught their breath as the sound came on, the most iconic, perhaps, of all the sounds of home.

 

> _And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at 1725 today.  
>  _ _There are warnings of gales in...._

* * *

The Tommo, who did not so much live to sark as sark to live, managed to uphold his reputation by muttering he’d been glad his ‘fears had been unfounded, and Payno hadn’t put on t’ bloody _Archers_ ’, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it, least of all when Liam queued up the preceding Saturday’s _Match of the Day._ They were, in consequence, much happier, if very nearly late, when the time came to go down the pub and see Niall perform.

It was very much December weather now. They had dressed warmly – which had the secondary benefit of disguising them somewhat, although Harry’ sartorial choices, which were always quirky (an off-duty reaction, perhaps, to the uniform of the chef), were bound to become readily recognisable as the paps began to get a feel for them – and their breaths puffed out white on the iron air.

But the pub was warm with the heat of an unprecedented crowd (word of mouth had spread rapidly the news that Niall! Horan! Was! Performing!); and Niall was on-stage already, with a scratch band he’d evidently drilled mercilessly in the hour he’d had, greeting their entrance with a quick lick of the _MotD_ theme tune seguing into the drumbeat and chords of ‘Soul Limbo’ in tribute to Liam. They were ushered to a table in a good spot to watch from without being too much watched, and waiters descended upon them as Niall mentioned their presence and led a (somewhat bewildered, on the crowd’s part) cheer. Paul and Paddy, alert in the crush, smirked.

* * *

Niall regarded musical snobbery as the sin against the Holy Ghost: he had his preferences, as everyone does, but he could listen to and take something away from any genre of music – could, and did do. And his ability to read a crowd: here, largely Germans with a soft spot for the Ireland of myth and imagination, Irish expats and trippers and tourists, and a large (in both senses) contingent of Irish-Americans: was unequalled.

And he had dashed off, in the hour before the show, his own parody or redaction or take on a classic plaint, spurred by homesickness and nostalgia; and was playing it now, to whoops and yells.

 

> … _And I’ll substantiate the rumour_  
>  _that the English sense of humour_  
>  _Is drier than than a drunkard’s glass;_  
>  _You can put up your dukes,_  
>  _and you can bet your boots  
>  __I’m leavin’ fast as I can shift arse:_
> 
> _I want t’ go home to the County Westmeath:  
>  _ _Trad Irish music from Moyvoughly and from Drumcree;  
>  _ _The friendliest people and the prettiest lasses ye’ll ever see...._

* * *

The morning came, snapping and scintillating with cold. They met it squarely, a little hollow about the eyes and temples from lack of sleep, but equally happy from that same (the Chef Styles fruit plate after the pub had made a good deal of difference in the bedroom plans of four of the five). If there were five more contented souls in Munich, they were necessarily the handful of paps who had managed the long-sought prize of snapping them as they’d come out of Kilian’s, clearly sober and in their right minds and, through Harry’s wisdom (Louis tended to push things before Louis was actually ready to push them, and then to repent, and whinge, at leisure), with only one evident couple in the lot of them, Zayn and Liam being already out and thus, so far, old news.

Zayn had suggested that only he and Liam need go to the memorials of 1972, and to Dachau; but the others had had none of that. It was well that they were buoyed by love and success and good fellowship when they went: it was a sombre day, whatever the night had been preceding.

They were quiet that evening, meditative and thoughtful. Paul and Paddy, monitoring security and the press, were pleased to see that the coverage had been – for a miracle – respectful, the night prior, and that they had succeeded in keeping their charges out of the news for today.

* * *

‘I ought to have listened to Zayn.’ Louis was sleepy, but not actually asleep, on Harry’s surprisingly broad chest. ‘I don’t know – how can I face these people tomorrow? How can football matter? How can I bear to – how can _they_ bear to –’

Harry soothed and quieted him. ‘It’s a test, yah? I don’t mean Liam meant it as one, or Zayn. But there’ll come a time. What about when you play at Hillsborough? What if there’s a match a few days after a disaster or a terror attack – or a plane crash that takes out friends and fellow players? Someday, somehow – I hope not as bad as those, but – you’ll have to lace up and go out and play under bad circumstances, when all you want to do is cower under the bedclothes, yah? And you _will_ be strong enough to do it, and you’re going to prove that to yourself tomorrow.’

‘ _You_ make me strong.’

‘Then you’ll always be strong. Because I’ll always be here, right? Okay?’

‘Mm. I love you, curls and all. I do.’

Harry rolled them over and languidly showed him how much that sentiment was reciprocated.

* * *

A ‘Chef’ of an altogether different order – the _top-_ order – was having a breakfast conference call with two of his mates.

‘You can’t have him,’ said Stuart Broad to Alastair Cook. ‘ _I_ want him.’

‘And you’ll not have him,’ said Eoin Morgan, jovially. ‘Big Payno’s _mine_ to call up.’

‘It’s not my decision,’ said Chef, who was keeping a weather eye on his daughter and her porridge bowl. She had been cranky since their arrival in Sri Lanka. ‘For one thing, I don’t expect much _will_ be my decision unless I really turn things around.’ Broady and Moggy fell silent. ‘My staying on as Test captain is not something you want to bet on just now; we already know you’re taking on the ODI captaincy, Westlife.’ It had not yet been announced, and ‘nothing had been set in stone, it mightn’t be necessary, you might have a return to form, dear boy’, but Cooky and Eoin Morgan both knew the score as to that: and knew as well that a big basher like Payne LJ should be, as Broady also knew, a welcome addition to the ODI side, and the T20 squad as well.

‘More than that, though, it’s not going to be any captain’s call, at the end of the day: less so even than usual. Not the Test skipper’s, and not the ODI captain’s or the T20I’s captain’s. The word from on high has gone out. It’s not even wholly in Stigsy’s hands.’ He was referring to Peter Moores, the England coach.

‘Payno is not going to be called up for the CWC.’

‘It’s not because he’s in Europe just now? Because that lad _works,_ and trains like a maniac –’

‘No, I understand the plan is to bring him up in April for the Tests in the West Indies, play him in the Dublin ODI in May, and, unless his form suddenly collapses and goes the way of mine, cap him for the home Ashes in July.’

* * *

As England were breakfasting in Sri Lanka, four and a half hours ahead, Zayn and Liam, all unknowing of the future and prepared to meet it and take it as it came, slept the sleep of the loved, the loving, and the thoroughly satiate.

Liam, alert as always to what his Zayn was in want of, _needed,_ and knowing also what he himself required, had been, after the shattering day, specially tender, specially attentive, and, if it were possible – which it quite likely wasn’t – even more amorous than commonly.

He had kissed every inch of Zayn’s taut body, tenderly, reverently; lavishing particular attention on his chest and his pectorals, laving and licking and nuzzling (‘I am so in love with all of you, love’ …. ‘oh, you _like_ that’ … ‘you are so _beautiful_ ’ … ‘God, your _nipples_ ’...). (Zayn, hazily, had sworn he’d remember later, and have Liam kiss him again – and again, and again – over his sternum, with something on his lips, so he could get a snap for reference and make it the centrepiece of a tattoo: perhaps with wings, for when Liam kissed him so near the heart, he soared, he could ruddy well _fly...._ )

He had expended no less care and loving attention on the rest of Zayn, and specially upon rimming him through two hands-free orgasms over the course of an hour, the second, for all their youth, almost painful, before finally, _finally_ entering him and shagging him past bliss into some state Zayn could not, marshal though he did the whole corpus of English literature, describe: and into a third orgasm, again wholly from the shag, hands-free, a classical prostate orgasm which no poet could hope to have words for. Zayn had insisted that Liam remain in him as they drifted into dreams which were not a patch upon waking reality, however sweet: feeling more than ever before loved and protected and cherished with Liam’s length sheathed in him. Perhaps, he’d thought inconsequently, as sleep had claimed him, Byron came nearest:

 

> _So, we’ll go no more a-roving_  
>  _So late into the night,_  
>  _Though the heart be still as loving,  
>  _ _And the moon be still as bright._
> 
> _For the sword outwears its sheath,_  
>  _And the soul wears out the breast,_  
>  _And the heart must pause to breathe,  
>  _ _And love itself have rest._
> 
> _Though the night was made for loving,_  
>  _And the day returns too soon,  
>  _ _Yet we’ll go no more a-roving  
>  _ _By the light of the moon._

* * *

The next day: the tour of the ‘Inflatable Boat’, the _Schlauchboot,_ the FC Bayern stadium, and the long day at _Säbener Straße_ and the training: went surprisingly swiftly, and shook away the more immediate sorrows of memory and history.

Harry of course was fascinated by the catering arrangements at the stadium and yet more by the team’s dietary arrangements and the restaurant at the training facility in Harlaching; but he took ample time to watch admiringly as Louis was given the chance to train and drill at _Säbener Straße_ Performance Centre. (Zayn, not without a few moments of reverie and rather dirty fantasy, had managed to lead Liam gently away from the weights and training area, over which he had been openly salivating.) Niall, although as supportive of The Tommo’s interests as was Zayn, and as loyal, had been if anything more interested – if less professionally so – in the restaurant as had been Harry. But they all watched Louis all the same.

One of the trainers had said – to general agreement – that Louis (who beamed to hear it) had done very well, quite impressively so … but he was a little concerned at the odd spikes reflected, at times when there was no apparent cause, on the attached heart monitor.

The lads, who immediately guessed that the cause _and_ correlation was with times when Louis caught sight of Haz’ watching presence, carefully did not look at one another; and Harry began a lengthy promise to look after Louis’ diet better and see he saw a GP once they were back in Blighty....

The Tommo, whose courage was growing daily, cut him off, and took his hand. ‘It does spike when I see my Hazza,’ said he, calmly, yet greatly daring. ‘Can you blame me?’

Zayn bit his lip, worriedly, at which Liam – who regarded the biting of Zayn’s lip as solely _his_ prerogative – drew him in to his side and kissed his temple reassuringly.

‘Ah,’ said the trainer, unphased. ‘So.’ He nodded, gravely. ‘In that case, you may without fear sauerbraten and käsespätzle for dinner have. Much luck and many years to you both – and never play abroad unless your Harry comes also with you, I do not think it good that you be away without him.’

Harry grinned. ‘There’s always a kitchen somewhere that’s hiring.’

‘Yes,’ said Louis. ‘And an English club to play for near whatever restaurant you open, love.’

Everyone smiled, with positively Bavarian sentimentality.

* * *

By subtle arrangement, Paul and Paddy made certain the lads were papped – respectably, respectfully, and in wholly uncompromising positions which not even the worst of the red-tops at home could spin – leaving the performance centre, and with their bodyguards firmly in the frame. They deferred all questions until they reached the hotel again, and their suite.

Whereupon – as Paul and Paddy smirked and Niall looked implausibly innocent – they were confronted with the sight of five rather bashful youths, kitted out in very reasonable facsimiles of their signature styles and attires, and ranging from a curly-haired teenager who looked rather like a juvenile Alan Davies, through a strapping young man who could easily have passed as Liam’s younger brother, to a doe-eyed, shy German Turk.

‘Well, y’ needn’t look at _me_ in t’at fashion y’ have.’ Niall pulled from his pocket a wodge of Euros which might have choked a horse. ‘What for would I not sponsor a holiday trip to Austria, in the comp’ny of Paul and Paddy, for five deservin’ lads from t’e orphanage?’

Liam, twigging immediately to the purpose of these decoys, was already ringing the concierge for directions to the nearest cash-point. He was damned if Niall Horan were going to be the only one contributing to an enterprise as useful as it was charitable.

Harry was grinning, and making immediate friends and conquests of the youths, and saying, ‘Paul, you’ll make sure you’re spotted on the platform, yah?’, whilst Louis and Zayn simply shook their heads.

* * *

The Hon. Peregrine had had speech of a chap he knew who knew a chap at FC Bayern; and he was very good about writing to his Uncle Robin.

His Uncle Robin, in turn, had a lordly view of patronage, avuncular – some might say, paternal (although his sons might dispute that), and others might say, paternalistic – and indulgent to those whom he had made his protégés; and he was an indefatigable correspondent, who knew everyone worth (in his estimation) knowing: including the Lady Patroness of Leeds United. His whole heart was given over, of course, to cricket, but he could be charitable even to footballers.

Wherefore Brigadier the earl of Maynooth wrote to Patricia, dowager countess of Harewood.

 

> _My dear Bambi, May one suggest that a weather eye be kept on one Louis Tomlinson as a prospect for Whites? He seems to be shaping surprisingly well and waxing much more mature on his travels. Of course I recognise that anyone who maintains that ‘travel broadens the mind’ has never spoken to the Average British Family upon their return from their hols on the Continent – ‘all goats and garlic, and no concept of how to behave in the afternoon’, as I believe ‘Henry Root’ put it – yet the lad does seem to be doing some growing-up, and might be an asset to your Peafowl...._

* * *

In London, Liam’s management team were quite happily considering the steady stream of incoming offers to endorse this or that and to accept this or that sponsorship, and other image rights issues of a lovelily lucrative sort. (The ‘pink pound’ had power – once there was, as now, a second ‘poster boy’ whom any father, however staid and dubious of modernity, should accept as his son’s boyfriend, and everyone trusted and wished to hug. English cricket was fortunate that its two out players, Davo and now Payno, were so universally lovable, really.) It was, of course, a constant struggle: Liam was cautious, and wisely so, because he knew what his management knew, that a county cricketer not yet capped for England in a Test, even the most famous, made comparatively little dosh even as measured against rugger buggers; when measured against the rawest signing for even a second-tier football side, he was, comparatively, poor as a sweep. The PCA’s own recommended minimum wage for a player of twenty-one years in age was under £20,000, after all, although of course Liam, who put bums on the seats, was worth, and was paid, rather more. All the same, with County clubs having salary caps and sharing revenue, and the ECB always poised to swoop down upon them to carry off a promising player after the manner of Zeus with Ganymede, cricket was nowhere near the money-spinner that was the obscenity of the Premier League. It was in endorsements that a cricketer, even an England player making over £100,000 p.a. (a third of the dosh handed out weekly to the execrable Wayne Rooney; a cricketer who was Test captain atop his basic central contract of some £700,000 to £850,000 p.a. made, excluding match fees, between £1,050,000 and £1,150,000 p.a.: which was even then less than four weeks’ worth of what a Premier Leaguer might be paid) – it was in endorsements, then, that a cricketer made it, or broke. (It has long been so. The _other_ Liam, Sir Ian Botham’s son, has Sir Viv Richards as godfather because Sir Viv and Sir Ian were paid so little in their day by Somerset that they shared a club-assigned flat in Taunton, with Dennis Breakwell, for yonks.)

And _that_ – the endorsement money which was the difference between relative penury and relative affluence – was his manager’s lookout, and constant concern; and with Liam as client, after a rocky start given his being out, sponsors already secured were now coming increasingly up to scratch, and new suitors for personal endorsements were now besieging their door: as was right and proper and immensely gratifying. Their client was not going to drop money on this trip; rather the reverse. It should pay for itself several times over.

Particularly as they were able to coordinate with Niall Horan’s team on the matter.

 

* * *

Sentiment at Edgbaston was not dissimilar. Mr Povey and Mr Chairman (Mr Norman Gascoigne, the retired banker), Mr Flindall and Mr Wilkes of Finance, Mr McCabe the Warks Cricket Board GM and the Performance Manager Mr Greetham, were all _very_ pleased with Young Liam Payne.

With one reservation, of course. The club were out of the woods – even without having hosted a Test match in 2014 –: woods they’d perforce entered through the costs of renovating the ground. All the same, bums on seats mattered to profitability; and there was always that one trifling problem.

‘Is it wrong of me to hope Liam’s capped only for the Third Test in the Ashes?’ This was, of course, to be played at Edgbaston. ‘I want the best for the lad, but, dear God, attendance _will_ slump if and when he’s away, playing for England.’

 

* * *

The youths from the Münchner Waisenhaus had departed, shyly grateful, a little starstruck (that was down to Niall: Louis was not yet, to his discomfiture, a household name, and Munich is _terra incognita_ for cricket), and with no little excitement, upon their hols, with Paul and Paddy, and with Herr Lejeune and Mr Heardman being seen to see them off at the station.

The press, naturally, although forced to keep a distance which defeated even the longest lenses, had followed, swallowing the feint hook, line, and sinker (neither the press nor the makers of metaphors are – to their lasting discredit – dry-fly anglers).

Which left the lads to meditate their next move.

‘I’ve spoken wit’ t’em at Seehof and at t’e Steigenberger, and t’ey’re willin’ t’ leak a “we cannot comment on guests” if t’e press folly on. T’row ’em aff t’e scent, but.’

‘But,’ said Liam in antiphon, ‘we’ll _actually_ be staying at the Ducan.’

Louis was dubious: rather about the destination than the accommodations. ‘But _Davos,_ Payno? A month before all them politicians and HRH and half Hollywood show up? Won’t it be crawling with press?’

‘Not until after we’ve left. And it’s Christmassy, it is.’

‘All right. What’s the Ducan, then?’

Liam smiled. ‘An old, rustic, ski-lodge-y sort of hotel, in Monstein. The sort of place you and Zayn might have stayed if you’d been taking this gap year the way you’d planned before I put me oar in.

‘Wood – and woods and slopes, right up in the mountains and all. I’d thought about doing the real gap year thing, getting one of their ten-bed group dorms and all, Spartan and all that, but....’

‘No,’ said Louis, wrinkling his nose. ‘No one wants to hear you two shagging in the same bunk bed.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ drawled Harry, with a wicked, dimpling grin. ‘We could have a competition....’

‘Not and me in t’e room, y’ can’t,’ said Niall, loudly. ‘And y’ can forget t’e family room as well; we’ve booked t’ree double superiors, because if I cannot pull a ski-bunny, I’ve lost me touch and may as well pack it in.’

Harry had been – as usual – engrossed in what his phone could tell him. ‘Tell the truth, Niall, you begged Payno to pick the Ducan because it’s right across the lane from the world’s highest brewery. God, it looks like everything on the menu has Monstein beer or Monstein whiskey in it … and it all sounds damned good.’

Louis was giving way to excitement, now the idea had the Hazza Stamp of Approbation. ‘Can we ski?’

Liam looked at him. ‘Not to sound like an English teacher –’ Zayn blushed – ‘but, _can_ you?’

‘Um.’

‘Then, no, mate. I’d be gutted if you fell or did something that crocked you up to where you couldn’t play. Get used to it, it’ll be in your contract.’

‘Is it in yours?’

Without even pausing, and without having to close his eyes, Liam began quoting. ‘“The Cricketer undertakes and agrees throughout the Term to report fit for pre-Season training and be capable of completing and satisfying any pre-Season fitness tests the Employer has notified to the Cricketer at the performance appraisal of the Cricketer conducted at the completion of the previous Season.... The Cricketer undertakes and agrees throughout the Term to use his best endeavours to maintain his form so as to be available for regular selection for matches and to perform his duties to the best of his ability under this Agreement and to, without the prior written consent of the Employer, refrain from engaging in any activity or pursuit which is or may be prejudicial to the Employer, or to the ECB or to his health or cricketing form or the performance of his duties under this Agreement, including but not limited to winter sports (such as skiing, snowboarding, tobogganing), scuba-diving, mountaineering, rock climbing, parachuting, racing on wheels or horseback, potholing, or bungee-jumping unless otherwise agreed in writing by the Employer....”’

‘Oh,’ said Louis. ‘Well, then.’

‘But there are,’ said Liam, earnestly, hastening to comfort and to be liked, ‘plenty of other things we can do.’

Louis raised an eyebrow (which, contrary to persistent rumour, he did _not_ have plucked and shaped, ta ever fucking so). ‘Such as?’

Liam stole a quick glance over at Zayn, and fought down a blush – with moderate success. ‘Um. They’re surprises. But we’ll all like them, and have fun?’

‘’Course we will,’ said Haz, soothingly, giving The Tommo a clear ‘shut-your-gob’ look.

* * *

They left Munich the next morning for a seven-hour rail journey: one they were very content to make. Seven hours on a train is not to every taste; but it was difficult to repine when the journey was this journey. The classic scenery of fairyland Bavaria gave way to that of the Allgäu, the land of Neuschwanstein and the first swellings, like a motif emerging in a tone poem, of the encroaching crescendo of the Alps. Then the Rhine and the Bodensee, Lake Constance, and St Margrethen upon the Austrian border, fruit and wine and pasture, cheese and beef, and the emergence of the Alps, now clad in their ermine Winter raiment; and on, then, on, higher and deeper (Zayn had read his Lewis), higher up and deeper in, in Christmas card scenes through Vaduz to Chur, from Chur to St Moritz in the deep Grisons, beside its eponymous lake, beneath the towering bulk and knife-like edges of Piz Bernina, thirteen thousand feet of rock and ice.

Yet that itself was but prelude. Next came the final push, amidst wintry splendour and mountain fastnesses, through Filisur to Davos Monstein, via the Landwasser Viaduct and Landwasser Tunnel, an hour and forty minutes on the Rhaetian Railway; the cradle of the Rhine, watched over as by nurses by the Lenzerhorn on the horizon, the Guggernellgrat, and all the great range of the Plessur Alps, with the Rinerhorn leaning over to tuck the infant in beneath a coverlet of snow.

And so the rustic light and warmth, the hotel like a chalet-style cuckoo clock; and supper; and bed.

And Louis, in those hours, despite wheedling Niall – he knew it was useless to wheedle Liam – had not succeeded in learning what surprises were in store.

* * *

It hardly mattered. Deep in Winter, deep in snow, deep in the cold, clean heart of the mountains, Louis found himself unfussed by tantalising inquisitiveness, Elephant’s Child though he could be, full of ’satiable curtiosity. Deep in Winter, deep in snow, deep in the cold, clean heart of the mountains, Louis found himself uncaring of winter sports, when there was so much more to experience without structure and hurry. Deep in Winter, deep in snow, deep in the cold, clean heart of the mountains, Louis found himself honed and pared to essentials, revelling in the simple after the surfeits of unexpected luxury which had characterised the journey thus far.

There was reason enough for this. Deep in Winter, deep in snow, deep in the cold, clean heart of the mountains, Louis found himself falling ever more deeply in love with his Harry; and the world could wag as it would, and go hang, as he, by the world forgot, forgot the world.

Liam also revelled, braced by weather as by champagne, exulting in Winter; and exulting all the more in watching Zayn’s beloved face brighten as they wandered from Davos Monstein to Davos proper, where Robert Louis Stevenson had wintered, and Conan Doyle had picked up skiing and taken the craze back to Britain, and Thomas Mann, for that matter, had set _Der Zauberberg, The Magic Mountain._ It specially amused Liam to see the excitement in Zayn as he tracked Conan Doyle’s route through Davos: for Liam, after all, had surprises in store for them all, but all of them truly, ultimately, for his Zayn.

Harry, cosseting Louis and being cosseted, laughing in the snow and admiring the woods and mountains, haunting the Christmas markets and rejoicing in Winter’s clarity, interesting himself in the local foods and local cuisine, was a child again by day; and by night … he had not thought it possible he could love Louis more, yet every day and twice each night he disproved that contention anew, and showed it by word and action.

Zayn, for his part, regarded this part of the journey, and this destination, as Rivendell: with the same caveat that – had it not been for the infinite variety which was Liam, and love, and loving and being loved by Liam – things enjoyable are difficult afterward to describe in mere words, whilst dangers and terrors want lengthier telling. It was an enchanted time in an enchanted place, and that sufficed.

Niall, surrounded by food and friends, scenery and sights, beer and birds of their own age, declared himself content, as a simple man with simple wants; but even Louis, who knew Niall so much less well and so much more briefly than did his Hazza; Louis, who had suppressed his own interests in music and drama to make himself a footballer; even he, watching his new friend walk crunchingly in the snow or stare at the wintry mountains with a faint and inscrutable smile, suspected, and rightly, that music was moving in Niall’s veins, new music and new songs which should startle and enchant the world in their good time.

* * *

It was time. Liam, with Niall’s help, was springing upon them the first of their surprises.

‘Pack an overnight bag,’ had said he, the night prior. ‘We leave early in the morning.’

And so, grumbling a bit (it was well for Zayn that Liam found his grumpy morning persona irresistibly adorable), they had done.

They boarded, after an early breakfast, at Davos Monstein, and hustled up the line to Davos Platz; and then, past the Schwarzsee, struck off North and Eastwards, to Landquart. _Mists and snow, mountains, forests, ice...._ By Quarten on the Walensee, to Thalwil upon Lake Zurich, amidst lake and valley and fat arable now sleeping in a fallow Winter, north of the Alps; thence to Luzern upon its lake, in the midst of its history and its beauty; and Southwards once more, to Meiringen in the early Winter dimpsey, the mountain twilight. _Fast falls the Eventide...._

As they pulled into Meiringen Station, where the mountain passes of the Bernese Oberland meet and exchange the kiss of peace, Zayn’s eyes lit up; and he grabbed Liam in a fierce hug and showered him with kisses of his own. He’d clearly caught on: which, Louis having _not,_ sent Louis into a pout which required, on Harry’s part, a similar performance to Zayn’s with Liam, to efface.

Nor was Louis wholly mollified the next morning when they once again made an early breakfast, and then were chivvied out into the snow and the iron air by a jovial Liam and a Zayn who, despite the hour, was tugging Liam forward, hand in hand, giddy with excitement; and he was not hugely pleased to find himself being dragged to what looked for all the world like an Anglican parish church in the midst of Switzerland.

Which it had been; but of course the English Church in Meiringen has been deconsecrated, and now houses a museum, a very particular one.

‘You didn’t notice the waterfall in the middle distance?’ Harry was teasing without a sting; but Louis, who was rather low on caffeine, bridled all the same.

‘I’ve seen it. And a thousand others in this country.’

Zayn flicked his ear. ‘This one’s special. You might have heard of it. It’s the Reichenbach Falls.’

Laughing, Harry grabbed the jaw-dropped Tommo by both hands and _skipped_ them, crab-wise, to the door of the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Conan Doyle Place, Meiringen.

* * *

They had tramped up to the Falls, at Liam’s insistence; they were to take the funicular back down to the town. (God only knew how, but somehow, Harry had pulled a deerstalker hat, an actual tweed deerstalker, from God alone knew where, and had insisted upon wearing it on their hike.) For now, though, they stood at gaze, watching the Winter cascade; watching a rapt Zayn watching the Winter cascade.

They could just hear him as he softly declaimed.

‘“It is indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is a immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamour. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss....

‘“An examination by experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other’s arms. Any attempt at recovering the bodies was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation. The Swiss youth was never found again, and there can be no doubt that he was one of the numerous agents whom Moriarty kept in this employ. As to the gang, it will be within the memory of the public how completely the evidence which Holmes had accumulated exposed their organisation, and how heavily the hand of the dead man weighted upon them. Of their terrible chief few details came out during the proceedings, and if I have now been compelled to make a clear statement of his career it is due to those injudicious champions who have endeavoured to clear his memory by attacks upon –”’ Zayn was forced to stop and clear his throat before he went on – ‘“him whom I shall ever regard as the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known.”’

The Winter track was too treacherous for them to cross, as in Summer they might have done, to the other side, to the fateful ledge and its marker; but Zayn knew perfectly well what that said, as well, and repeated it half to himself as he gazed into that mythic chasm: ‘“At this fearful place, Sherlock Holmes vanquished Professor Moriarty, on 4 May 1891”’.

He turned at last, with a soft smile, and buried himself in Liam’s embrace; and, leaving the others quietly to follow, he and Liam walked, hand in hand, to the funicular station that should return them to the town.

* * *

Two days after, back at base in Monstein, sleepy and full of raclette, the three others realised that when Liam, aided by Niall, had said, ‘surprises’, he’d fully meant the plural.

‘Pack an overnight bag,’ said Liam, in deliberate echo. ‘We leave early in the morning.’

‘Where for _this_ time? Peter Pan’s childhood home or summat?’

Zayn sniggered. ‘Tommo, you _know_ you’ll get no lift from Leeyum. Why bother asking?’

Liam, though, smiled and shook his head. ‘Sometimes, Tommo, the journey is the destination.’

‘Oh, you do talk some shit, Payno, that’s a _stupid_ saying no matter how many times I hear it, how can the journey be the destination?’

Harry leant over and whispered in Louis’ ear, explaining _precisely_ how sometimes the fun was in the getting there, as Louis’ colour heightened, his eyes grew glassy, and his breathing waxed shallow. Before Haz was anywhere near finished whispering, The Tommo dragged him bodily from his seat as he himself stood, a trifle hunched over at the waist, and without bothering to say a word dragged Harry away in the evident direction of … a horizontal destination known for its sheets, pillows, and duvet.

* * *

They took the train to St Moritz once more; and Zayn, Haz, and The Tommo stopped in their tracks, bags dropping to the platform. The sleek train with its red and white livery and its observation cars stood before them, blazoned with a name which conjured magic.

‘We’re taking the Glacier Express?’ Haz’ voice was low, and awed.

‘T’rough a Winter wonderland,’ said Niall, half-singing the half-line, and grinning all over his face. ‘First class all t’e way.’

Liam smiled in shy self-deprecation, and promptly found himself with an amorous armful of Zayn even as Harry spun and twirled Louis about in circles.

‘Oh,’ said Liam: ‘and happy birthday, Tommo, this is part of your pressie from me and Nialler.’

‘Payno … Nialler.... I mean. _Thank_ you.’

‘Cheers, mate. We’ll stay overnight in Zermatt,’ added the pragmatical Liam. ‘Let’s get the tickets in hand, and board, shall we?’

* * *

As Harry did not omit to point out to Louis, ‘the world’s slowest express’ was a classic sample of the journey’s being more important than the destination, and the ride being the point of the journey (‘and the slower the better, eh, love?’). Even in Winter, they saw, from the superb panorama cars, the pastures – there was little arable – amidst the mountains; forest and field, mead and meadow, peak and gorge; river and dairy and the little villages with their churches. It was – Zayn had read his Chesterton – the Staffordshire Moorlands and the Peak District’s farms set down amidst the Highlands of Scotland; even as the viaducts over the mountain torrents were images of what the Settle & Carlisle, or the West Highland Railway, might have done over Cheddar Gorge or Cwm Clydach.

Eight hours of rapture were their portion, switchback and tunnel, steep climbs and towering viaducts (Zayn liked the tunnels best: they were perfect for snogging Liam; and, anyhow, he had read his scholarly critiques of Hitchcock and Freud and train tunnels and _North by Northwest_ ); and always, always, the scenery, robed in Winter white and trimmed in dark forests dusted with snow. Albula; Landwasser; Furka; and Täsch, and the long last climb to high Zermatt, the Meadow Bourne, cradle of the Rhône, beneath the Matterhorn, with the waiting fiacres at the station, the champing horses steaming in the bitter air....

They slept that night in the luxury implied by the fiacres at the station, and, the next morning, were once more enrapt by the return journey on the Glacier Express, through scenes that felt as always as if they were living inside a Christmas card.

 

* * *

Back in the simple, almost Scandinavian comfort without otiose luxury that was the Ducan – Haz and Zayn each, severally, had caught Niall humming ‘Norwegian Wood’ to himself – they rallied, and, taking it in turns to keep Louis occupied (Haz of course did it best, but even he had necessarily to bugger off to Davos and Klosters at least once, with Christmas Eve imminent), , on a rota, when they might. The Tommo professed to think that Zayn and Liam disappeared to shag athletically and in improbable positions (Harry was the least trifle perturbed by Louis’s imagination, or rather by his using it to imagine what their friends might be getting up to instead of exerting it upon their own bedroom romps), and that Niall, when absent, was pulling birds _après-ski;_ but of course he hoped, and hoped correctly, that they were off buying proper tributes for the most important of December nativities: _his._ He’d settle for gold, frankincense, and myrrh if all else failed, of course.

Liam and Zayn had yet to quarrel; yet even to argue. It was beginning to seem (fond hope) as if they never should do, each being one to have that quarrel with himself first and take on the other’s point of view. The nearest they’d come to it thus far was over Louis’ present. Liam had suggested that they get him something from both of them. Zayn, naturally, had pointed out that he did still have his pride; that Liam had already, with Niall, paid for most of the journey and specifically for the outing on the Glacier Express; and that, largely because Liam was paying for so much, he, Zayn, had a hell of a lot of dosh he hadn’t had to spend, and wished to get something for his friend’s birthday from him, with his own money.

Liam simply nodded. ‘Whatever you think best, love. But in some things, well: you may as well get used to us giving gifts as a couple, we’ll be doing it for the next sixty years or so.’

That brought Zayn up standing, stunned by the realisation of just what he’d already known they were to each other, in the implications he had not really viscerally understood before then.

The others found them still heatedly snogging sixteen minutes later.

 

* * *

Christmas Eve being Christmas Eve (the benighted pagans of Davos, Klosters, and Monstein were sadly unaware that it was the Feast of the Nativity of The Blessed Tommo), their slap-up birthday dinner for Louis was held the night before, on the 23 rd  , at Montana Stube. (Learning that their speciality was roast poussin, Louis pretended with a commendably straight face to be outraged: ‘Haz, how _could_ you? Are you saying I’m no spring chicken any longer?’: which sent Harry into a fit of giggling it took several minutes to wait out, before he made effusive mock-apologies. They both disgraced themselves by sniggering once Harry had ordered, as Louis’ pudding, a vanilla ice with hot berries which appeared upon the menu as ‘Hot Love’.)

All the same, it was as memorable an evening as all the evenings they’d spent in Switzerland, as memorable as their regular stops for cakes and coffee at the renowned Kaffee Klatsch.

Davos and Klosters being what they were, the gifts showered upon Louis the next day for his birthday could not have been bettered in London, indeed in Bond Street – where it was actually _less_ likely that one should run into, as they had joked they feared they might do, Lord Mandelson. (Harry had gone to Schauerte and found the perfect antique wristwatch, perfectly reconditioned, for Louis.)

And Christmas Day – a day of Skype-chats with families, and the exchange of yet more gifts (Zayn refused to show anyone else what Liam had got him), and quiet stillness, and peace, and love brotherly and otherly – was simply perfect, in the unmarred, new-fallen snow and afternoon sunshine. Missing their families a bit though all of them were, they managed all the same to have, in an outwardly foreign setting, a Christmas which was, in its essentials, in the good sense Dickensian, keeping it (in Zayn’s case in its more secular and universal aspect) in their hearts.

And as Niall said, the other four _were_ with their families in all that mattered, in any case.

* * *

Zayn, who was after Christmas so notably and clearly gone for Liam, even as measured as before, had been the one to suggest they give Venice and Verona a miss. Vienna for the New Year (and for Niall), Turin and Madrid for The Tommo, certainly: but he had had his Shakespeare at Elsinore, and – unexpectedly – his RLS and his Conan Doyle in Switzerland, and he was ready to turn for England, home, and beauty.

This was ascribed, and with good reason, to his desire to get on with adult life now that that life included Liam. Which was true enough; but there were other forces, perhaps, at work as well.

Fate, or Providence, or _Qadar,_ had plans for them, and hasted them onwards.

 

* * *

The day after Boxing Day, five happy youths from the Munich orphanage, with Paul and Paddy conspicuously acting as bodyguards, and looking from a distance quite like a pop musician, a cricketer, a chef, a football prospect, and an aspiring teacher, left Vienna, carefully remarked ( _at_ that distance) by the press and the paps, for Augsburg: whence they’d slip away, in their own clothes, for home, even as Paul and Paddy travelled ostentatiously on towards Dortmund.

That night, high in the mountains, Zayn and Liam reached new heights in their passion. They were attuned now, and with every night their caution with one another – never their tenderness, but their hesitance, the last diffidence of a yet-newish relationship – melted away. They knew now what one another wanted and needed, and it was not by any means always kittens and rainbows. When Liam pulled swiftly out of Zayn, painting his dilated and greedy entrance with his orgasm before powerfully fucking it back into him, Zayn came with what was almost a seizure, and swore after he’d had an out-of-body experience.

* * *

They were eager to see new sights; they were filled with regret at leaving Monstein, and vowed to return in after years. To Zayn, it seemed as if he were leaving Rivendell indeed, but not on a quest of danger with all Middle-Earth in the balance, but for the Shire once more: the road led ever on, but it led towards home.

And it was exciting. This Switzerland of lake and mountain which they now must leave was once the land of the Celts, its waters sacred and its peaks numinous; here had the La Tène culture flourished, and the Celtic smiths forged wondrous swords which had defeated once even Greece, even Rome. And there was not a man amongst them, from the obvious – Niall – to the inobvious – Zayn – in whom the old blood of the Celts did not run.

And they were leaving it now, for another land anciently Celtic before the Germans came, where salt and iron had made kings rich and powerful, their influence and their culture and their glory radiating from Hallstatt.... For Austria, rococo and baroque, all Mozart and marzipan over horrors and tragedies; for Vienna, _Vindobona_ of the Celts, seized and garrisoned by Rome, where reposed the dust of SS Colman and Feirgil and a thousand Irish monastics, Vienna which spoke the same German, or very nearly, as Bavaria, yet dreamt strange dreams in stranger tongues; Vienna, whose emperors and archdukes (Swiss in their origins), princes and nobles, charwomen and dustmen, could claim descent of pagan khans and Most Catholic Monarchs, Byzantines and Magyars, Bohemians, Poles, Lorrainers, Cumans, Serbs, Jews, and Turks, and every blood upon Earth: all waltzing to the same relentless rhythm....

From Davos Monstein, then, to Davos Platz, and once more to Landquart; and then a new trail, through Sargans of the great castle and into Liechtenstein for a brief run through the Kracherwald beneath the Three Sisters, the _Drei Schwestern,_ and so into Vorarlberg; on, on, through the Tyrol in the snow, in the shadow of the Lechtal Alps, through Innsbruck laden with history at the head of the Brenner Pass, where once the legions tramped and their eagles glittered against a colder sky, and after in response the Alemanni marched, to fall to the legions at Benacus which is Lake Garda: the first of the German attempts to reach the ‘land where the citrons bloom’, of the armed _Sonnenreise,_ which haunted with _Sehnsucht_ Winckelmann and Goethe, Strauss – who gave his most wistful waltz the title ‘Wo die Zitronen blühen’ – and Mann and Wagner; seeking the sunshine and the last rays of the Classical, even at the cost of _Death in Venice...._

On they travelled, along the skirts of the Chiemgau Alps, hasting, hasting.... Through Land Salzburg and its Mozartian, Roman, Celtic city, through old Roman Noricum, Herzl’s Salzburg – and the Nazis’ –; through the Salzkammergut which birthed Hallstatt; through Upper Austria, which gave the world so sweet a torte from Linz and so terrible a son from Braunau, where Kepler and Bruckner made their marks; on, into Lower Austria, through Amstetten and Melk of the abbey (Zayn had read his Umberto Eco, and, recalling their visit to the Reichenbach Falls, tipped his imaginary cap to William of Baskerville): Melk, across the river from which stands Schloß Artstetten, summer home and burial place of the archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, duchess of Hohenberg, whose murders by terrorists had led inevitably to such Commonwealth War Graves as those at Huy. On through Lower Austria, like the very streams, now gelid, slowed by Winter’s reins, which fell ever away towards the Danube: through S Pölten, ancient Ælium Cetium, baroque and mannered and prosperous between the Bohemian Massif and the Türnitz Alps....

Fate hurried them onward, to Vienna, that Viennese whirl of a city, that confection upon the Danube: to Vienna, now denuded of paps lured back to Bavaria.

* * *

Ten hours and three minutes, and Vienna, that city of Catholic suicides, obsessed with death and music and sex and power; Vienna, which presented itself and saw itself in terms of a sanitised past, always glorious and always lost, always remote and always half-mythical, the city of the good, old days that are no more and never were, days good _because_ they were old, always slipping irretrievably away; Vienna as it existed in the music of the Strausses and the _Wienerlieder_ and _Schrammelmusik_ in any _Heuriger._ Vienna, with coffee _mit Schlag_ and a wine spritzer and an operetta smile, its past transmuted into fairyland seen through the gauze of pious memory.

‘It’s away in a dwalm they are, always,’ said Niall, who had been there before; ‘t’e anti-Berlin, Berlin t’rough a lookin’-glass. Waltzin’ wit’ t’e fai- – wit’ t’e Good Folk.’ He shrugged. ‘At least we’ll sleep and eat and drink well.’

That was an understatement. Niall, as the official representative of music, had wholly taken over the planning for the Viennese stay, from the off – and claimed he’d found a way for the label to pay for it, anyway. He’d thought seriously about the Imperial and the Palais Coburg, but, in the end, had chosen tradition (for which read, had let his belly guide him, quite literally ‘going with his gut’): they were booked – after the Simple, Pioneer Life of Monstein (not half) – for the mythic, Viennese, nostalgic luxuriance of the Sacher.

‘All right,’ had said Harry when, just past St Pölten, Niall had revealed this (Zayn had looked at Liam, who had shrugged helplessly: this was Niall’s pigeon, _in toto_ ); ‘but I _am_ going over to the Coburg’s kitchens to say “hullo” to Silvio.’ Silvio Nickol, at the Palais Coburg, had two Michelin stars to his credit, and Haz knew and liked him – as he did Werner Pichlmaier, of course, at the Sacher.

This didn’t phase Nialler, naturally, who was as ready to eat at Plachutta or Vestibül – or the Anna Sacher or the Rote Bar – as at the Esterházykeller or the Trzesniewski … or a _Würstlstand_. And contrariwise and vice versa. For once, he was there mainly for the music.

Niall, after all, as has been remarked, regarded musical snobbery as the sin against the Holy Ghost: he had his preferences, as everyone does, but he could listen to and take something away from any genre of music – could, and did do. For Niall, every musical creation was, like the impeccable Bach’s, a musical _offering,_ partaking of sacrifice and celebration, something sacred and exalted. (In just the same way, Zayn, though his critical faculty was highly trained and his tastes strict, regarded every essay in putting words together to catch a mood or adorn a tale, tell a truth or assert a fact, capture a mood or evoke a theme, as a form of – he had read his Tolkien – secondary creation, the nearest humankind could come to imitating and following the example of the All-Merciful who had created them of dust and will and _his_ words; and Harry saw in the caring creation, for sharing and enjoyment, of food, the greatest service one could render to one’s fellows, be that meal a bacon sarnie or _caneton à la rouennaise:_ ‘The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star’; ‘Whoever receives friends and does not participate in the preparation of their meal does not deserve to have friends’; Louis believed with all his fervent heart that endeavour upon the pitch, on the dusty playing ground of a sink school or at Anfield or Wembley or Emirates, White Hart Lane or Old Trafford – or Elland Road – partook of the nature of a rite, a special thing set aside, a unity and an exercise in Britishness; and Liam knew without doubt that the village XI, playing in a hopeless cause against the next parish over, with the butcher from the market town in a different sort of white coat for the day, robed and vested as umpire, whilst a duke’s grandson faced the bowling of the local postie, was at one with a Test at Lord’s, just as the service for ten old maids in a parish church was no different in kind to a High Mass in the highest of cathedrals, being one and the same.) And Niall was humble enough, and wise enough, to know how much he did not know, and how much he could yet learn, and how worthy the tuition of Strauss and Kalman, Léhar and Mozart, and the professionalism of the Hofburg Orchestra, little inferior if at all to the Wiener Phil.

* * *

‘Good Lord.’ Liam was staring at his laptop. ‘I’d best order a wreath.’

‘Babe?’

‘Noddy died – Geoff Pullar, I mean, the England and Lancs and Gloucs batsman back in the Sixties. Um. Do you. I mean, I’m sending a wreath. I thought, perhaps, it. Your name. On it? With mine?’

Zayn’s answer, although not verbal, was a clear yes.

* * *

‘Jaysus,’ said Niall, giving his shoes a last brush. ‘When it’s _Haz_ I trust more nor t’e two of ye....’

‘It’s not as if we’ll be groping each other’s bums at the concert hall,’ said Zayn.

‘No, nor caressin’ nor spankin’ ’em – for once. All right, all right, I grant y’ don’t – _too_ much – in public, and when y’ _remember_ ye’re in public. And I don’t mind, at all, at all, t’e hands held, or t’e way Payno has o’ caressin’ yer side, or t’e glare y’ give, Zaynie, whenever someone so much as claps a hand on Payno’s shoulder. It’s the fascination y’ have each of ye for t’e ot’er’s face, strokin’ a cheek, touchin’ each ot’er’s chins –’

‘I. Hm. I guess we do do that. Does it really bother you?’

Harry was elbowing Louis none too gently in the ribs, to cut off his comment about the fascination Zayn and Liam had for one another’s faces, and mouths, and after all, Haz, with lips like Liam’s, and can you just imagine Zayn, with those cheekbones –

‘No,’ said Niall, with as much exasperation as he was capable off (which was very little when it came to His Lads), ‘what I object to is t’at y’ never _noticed_ it wit’out its being _told_ t’ ye! Ye’re doing it _now,_ Chrisht!’ Hastily, Zayn let his hand fall from where he’d been softly tickling the underside of Liam’s chin.

Niall sighed. ‘Ah, control yerselves a bit, it’s all I ask....’

 

* * *

It was New Year’s Eve, the concert over. Their heads were swimming, with too much coffee and sugar and just enough champagne, and with waltzes, waltzes.... It was easy to believe in the Viennese myth just then: the city as _Kaiserschmarrn;_ a Vienna of marzipan buildings with sugar for snow; to believe the fantasy as the crush of people in the streets with them did, singing and carousing, letting off fireworks. Then the _real_ fireworks, the true and full display, lit the sky, stars dancing and exploding, and Steffl, the Stephansdom, spoke at last: _Die Pummerin,_ ‘Boomer’, the great bell tolling, marking the change from the old year to the new. _Ring out, wild bells...._

The next day, they wandered the city, quietly, peacefully, Zayn walking a trifle gingerly (the others’ speculations about his Christmas present from Liam, which no one had seen even yet – or was to see –, becoming wilder and wilder).

And that evening, they took the night train, the sleeper, for the seventeen hour journey to Turin.

* * *

‘I’m surprised,’ whispered Louis as they ran through the velvet darkness, Klagenfurt behind them, Villach behind them, the Rosen Valley about them, pressing on, through the Eastern Alps to the frontier, through the Carinthian evenfall. ‘Surprised, I mean, we didn’t _notice_ Zayn and Liam, and the face … thing.’

‘’M not,’ yawned Haz. ‘If you’d time to notice them, I’d’n’t’ve been doing my job properly.’

‘Oh, I’m a _job,_ now, am I?’ Louis’ tone was fondly mocking.

He felt Harry nod solemnly. ‘A full-time one. Day _and_ … night.’

There were profound advantages to a single deluxe sleeper. Even if it meant that Niall, contentedly single and snoring in his own, might, the next day, regale them with a few verses of ‘The City of New Orleans’ – and doubtless putting special stress on ‘rockin’ to the gentle beat / And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel’.

(It need hardly be said that Niall did just that, the next day, with Zayn chiming in with a few lines about a certain cabriolet, sealed like a tomb and rocking like a ship – _if this van’s rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’_ – and _Mme Bovary._ )

* * *

Inter Milan had missed a trick, and were bitterly regretting it. When approached by an English cricketer (of whom, he being a cricketer, they had never heard) in behalf of an English prospect of whom they had likewise never heard, the _Nerazzuri_ had replied with a pro forma response setting out the options for group tours of San Siro and not so much as mentioning access to the Angelo Moratti Sports Centre, the training facility.

Louis had regretted that as well: he should have liked to have seen the pitch, the first purpose-built football ground in Italy, just as he’d have quite liked, earlier on, to have found time to visit Borussia Dortmund and its _Hohenbuschei_ training facilities (although, as to Inter Milan, Niall, who’d joined the Take That lads backstage at San Siro three years prior, having done some new arrangements for them in the very greenest salad days of his success, impossibly young, hadn’t thought much of the place as a music venue). But he – and even Liam – had taken a certain pleasure in responding, with every expression of sincerity, to the emails from Inter Milan, after they’d become slebs pursued by paps, regretting that they had since made other arrangements and could not now alter their train and hotel reservations.

* * *

Treviso, and Venice, where the sea weds the land, and into the Valley of the River Po, the mountains breached, the South achieved; Padua and Verona, Brescia and Milan. Then on, through the cradle of the Renascence, through Lombardy into Piedmont, to Turin of the steel and the chocolates, the racing cars and the labour pangs of the _Risorgimento._

The Porta Susa: new in glass and steel, yet oddly like Brunel’s visions; crowds and hurry....

But not for them. A driver met them. They were staying in the nearby countryside, at the Villa Matilda (Louis liked luxury, but his Yorkshire gorge rose at the thought of yet another surfeit of it; but Niall asserted that the label had booked it, and that was that). Harry was simply excited to see the kitchens – although Niall had warned them all that, after the morrow’s visit to Juventus Centre Vinovo and the tour, after, of Juve’s obtrusively ‘green’ and smugly modern stadium (and a presentation on the club’s _new_ performance centre a-building in Continassa), they were damned well dining at Del Cambio. If it was good enough for Cavour in his day, after all....

It didn’t, reflected Louis, matter, really, he supposed. Oh, he was eager to see Vinovo, and to go on to Valdebebas and meet _Los Blancos;_ but he, like Zayn, like – he suspected, quite rightly – Liam, was increasingly turning his thoughts toward home. It was almost a _nesting_ urge, the migratory return of Springtide, the early return of the earliest pioneering swallow.

He said as much to Haz once they were ensconced in their suite, hoping – without saying: he had his pride, and his secret fears – Harry should say the same.

‘Yah, I feel that too.’ (Louis made quite certain he did not react with relief, but Harry smiled: he knew his love’s ‘tells’.) ‘I’m actually eager to get back to Blighty, yah? For once. I s’pose … I suppose it’s because this time, I have a reason, a future to plan and someone who is that future.’

Harry might have elaborated on that theme, but his mouth was, he found, otherwise occupied just then – and for some time to come.

* * *

Despite everything, Louis was enthusiastic and eager to be off the next morning. He noted – they all noted – that Zayn was sleepier even than commonly, but much less grumpy, indeed positively Zen, about being up rather early.

Smirks all ’round.

It was Fate, though, which was hurrying them forward in this new year.

* * *

It was quite true that Zayn and Liam had had ample fun in bed the night previous: as was only to be expected on a night when Zayn came out of the en-suite, cleansed of the day’s travel, to find Liam – who’d showered first and firmly insisted that they shower separately, to Zayn’s temporary disappointment – waiting for him wearing nothing save a grin … and Zayn, clean and dry, had in turn let fall his bathrobe to reveal that he was wearing one of his Christmas gifts from Liam, this being the red one with the black lace.

All the same, that was not the only reason why Zayn was a bit sleepy. He’d been early awake, with a duty before him.

The five orphan youths from Munich had written very nicely to each of them – as Niall said, their English was streets ahead of any of the lads’ German, even Harry’s, though that was, admittedly, not in itself saying much – thanking them for the holiday and expressing gratification at having met them. (Zayn, frankly, and Liam, and, suspected Zayn – again quite rightly –, the others as well, had all had to resist the overwhelming urge to adopt the five.) But Zayn had got rather more than mere thanks in one email; and that morning, he had written back.

 

> _Dear Mehmet, Thank you very much for your note; but the pleasure was all ours. We are under an obligation to you, all five of you, for your help._  
>  _I hope I can repay a part of that obligation in this email._  
>  _I’m very glad you and the other young men enjoyed your trip to Vienna. I imagine it did feel surreal, being there of all places for, of all things, Christmas, and specially so when you think there was a time – only three hundred years ago: a time when America was already settled by British colonists, and Pachelbel and Purcell were composing; the age of Newton and Leibniz, Boyle and Locke and van Leeuwenhoek – when some of your ancestors were besieging the city._  
>  _The thing is, though, you are German – Bavarian, in fact (I know there’s a difference! It’s like Scots, or Texans in America), just as I’m British. That is what matters. When I was fourteen or so, and the hormones were raging, it frightened me, my own thoughts and desires and urges did, and for about six months I went through a phase of being super-religious. My father – gently – laughed me out of it. Then I went through a phase of being Too Cool, and a rebel, and all the rest of it. He laughed me out of that, too. Because I_ _ am _ _British; and you are German. (Yes, OK, Bavarian.) That you have Turkish ancestors doesn’t change that, any more than my having Pakistani ancestors changes it for me. In fact, we’re lucky to be who we are. My father always reminded me that Jinnah was an excellent example: a Believer who was a good citizen, indeed the father of, a non-sectarian state (well, that was the idea). Atatürk was just the same. I have never forgotten what my father told me when I was a little younger than you are now (not that I’m that much elder to you!): That one must always follow the will of Allah, but not of men who claim to speak for Him. Who can speak for Allah? He gave us prophets, and the last and greatest was Muhammad (pbuh),_ _ Khatam an-Nabiyyin _ _: who now, after The Prophet, dares speak for Allah as if_ _ he _ _were a prophet?_  
>  _I think – but don’t follow me: follow what is the will of Allah as you know it –_ _ I _ _think what you are called to do is to be the best German you can be, the best Bavarian, showing that a Believer (who can be a German by blood, anyway, my mum’s as British as they come) can be as good a German, as loyal a Bavarian, as any Wittelsbach or Schmidt. It’s worth trying.  
>  _ _Please never hesitate to stay in touch. I hope to see you again, particularly if you come to England: my mum will insist on putting you up if you do. You’re an awesome bloke, and don’t ever forget that._
> 
> _Stay cool, bhai,  
>  _ _Zayn_
> 
> _PS:  
>  _ _You lads should be getting a package from us by tomorrow or the next day._

In that package, Liam, Zayn, Haz, and Louis had sent them their Union flag hats, and Niall had sent his scarf in Irish colours.

 

* * *

After dinner that evening, and the return, exhausted, from a full day (Liam had been intensely interested in the training equipment and layout; Zayn had done his best not to be, or, rather, not to be too interested in Liam’s fascination with the training room: he’d watched a Brazilian porno once – all right, more than _once_ – which had featured a muscled young hunk of a trainer doing all manner of wonderful things in any number of interesting positions on – and with – all sorts of sturdy equipment to a _very_ enthusiastic twink, and it was far too easy to re-imagine and recast those scenes...), Louis also turned to the writing of an email: to Liam, describing, as if Liam were back in Wombourne, all he’d seen and learnt and watched and concluded at the _Bianconeri’s_ stadium and Vinovo training centre.

He had begun, had Louis, as he meant to go on; and he recognised and appreciated that these notes should come in quite handy when he met with Sgr Cellino and Mr Redfearn.

 

* * *

Discipline – _self-_ discipline: none of the lads was really all _that_ kinky – was a useful thing, whether in an athlete, a musician, a teacher, or a cook.

And they were being given every opportunity to learn it.

Due, perhaps, to possible knowledge (however acquired) of Inter Milan’s having missed a trick, Juve were determined that Sgr Tomlinson and party should remain in Torino through 6 January, as the guests of the club and of the Agnellis, and watch (from the owners’ box) their clash against that selfsame hated rival in the annual _Derby d’Italia._ Even with the homing instinct strong in them, it was a difficult offer to decline; but they were obliged to be in Spain by no later than 5 January, and were compelled, with agonised reluctance, to beg off.

(They did not themselves realise, then, the lads, that part of the drive to hasten on – the part which came from within them and was not the urging of Fate – sprung, ultimately, from the fact that as they got deeper into the Continent, they found fewer and fewer people who spoke English _comfortably_ and fluently, and fewer yet who _understood_ – as did, say, the Dutch – the English manner, the British point of approach, what a cricketer was, and … well, Niall had long resigned himself to the stereotypes and misunderstandings and incomprehensions which are the lot of the _Irishman_ abroad. This, perhaps, was why they had so enjoyed their stops in Switzerland: having once been a nation of mercenaries, the Swiss have become a nation, not of shopkeepers, but of hoteliers, who have studied to make welcome their guests. It is no accident that Swiss hoteliers, particularly since Mr Sherlock Holmes defeated Professor Moriarty, have liked to name their hotels the ‘Englischer Hof’.)

The Juve management, and the Agnellis, were disappointed – although not half so much so as was The Tommo – but impressed and approving as well. One got, rather, the sense that they were thinking, _Ah, the English gentleman, who keeps his appointments whatever the cost._ (M Verne’s tale of the circumnavigatory Mr Phileas Fogg has much to answer for, even now, in the view the Continentals take of Britons.)

Moreover, it was past time Haz had his turn in the sun. The route from Turin, leaving Porta Susa, runs through Savoy to Chambéry, and thence to Valence – the one in Drôme – ‘where begins the Midi’. There, upon the bank of the Rhône, in the town where Montpellier HSC’s obnoxious owner was born (excellent Ligue 1 team, thought Louis, but with a shit of an owner, but there, the old man’s a dustman grown rich), there in Valence the _Maison Pic,_ with its three Michelin stars, has been for a century and more the creation of … three stars: _grand-père_ André Pic; Jacques Pic, _fils d’André;_ and his daughter in turn, the immortal Anne-Sophie Pic, whom Hazza regarded rather as a favourite, if sometimes terrifying and Wodehousian, aunt.

It was only fair that they break their journey in Valence before boarding the TGV bound Southwards, toward Avignon, Nîmes, Montpellier, and Barcelona Sants, to transfer there to maternal care of the TGV’s Spanish equivalent, AVE, for Madrid Puerta de Atocha.

* * *

Louis might – or so family lore had told him – have had a Belgian great-gran or summat, but there was something about being forced to stand by and listen to a happy Haz burbling in fluent and idiomatic (and culinary) French which made him a little jealous. (Niall, of course, merely noted that _he_ was made _hungry_ by it: even if ‘presentation’ and ‘the art of food’ and ‘food as art’ and _nouvelle cuisine_ and all that were, Niall not so secretly thought, twee and pretentious and, worst of all, too feckin’ _small_ in the portions, Jaysus, and what for would they not serve a lad a chop or two or a mixed grill, with some drisheen at it, or some Dublin coddle, and boxty and colcannon and champ, and what about the pudding whilst you’re at it, even it was but a bit of gur cake....)

Louis was happy that Hazza was happy: of course he was. He reproved himself for the fugitive thought that only _he_ ought to be what and who made Harry happy: he did not wish to be That Sod. All the same, Harry, all smiles and dimples and bright malachite eyes, engrossed in the dark arts of the kitchen, and happily chatting away – and at a far quicker pace than he spoke in English – in rapid-fire French, caused Louis to feel a trifle … excluded. Forgotten about.

And … well. Hearing Harry at his happiest, gesturing expansively in response to French gesturing, clearly at home in the heart of his art, and banging on in French, did not leave Louis feeling merely neglected, or jealous. It also made him so hard he seriously feared he was doing himself an irreparable injury.

* * *

Fortunately for all concerned, the schedule called them away soon enough, before Niall starved or Louis erupted (or Zayn and Liam decided to settle there and live life in espadrilles and drink plonk, with Zayn teaching English as a second language and Liam going out for professional rugger, or handball, or boules or some damned thing); and fortunately, a happy Harry was a Harry dedicated to sharing that happiness with his Louis, quite thoroughly (and pity the poor stewards on the sleeper from Valence to Madrid).

* * *

By this point in their travels, after having been papped on their own terms, and with rumour, painted full of tongues, having whispered of The Tommo’s prospects, and with even benighted Continentals having had impressed upon them that Liam Payne was a person of some athletic importance – and with foodies knowing just who Haz was and _everyone_ aware of the phenomenon which was Niaalllll!!! Hooorrrrrrrrrrrr _aaannnnnnnnnnn!!!!!_ –, the lads were being taken rather seriously.

They had run through the Pyrenees, where once had resounded the horn-call of Roland, and beside the sparkling Winter Med; through Zaragoza of the sieges and ancient Calatayud; through Guadalajara, that quixotic town which had known so much of war and its miseries; and on at last to the Puerta de Atocha in proud Madrid.

And from Girona on, it had been Niall – not the famous name, the singer-songwriter, celebrated and beloved, but their own Niall – who had stepped at last into the quotidian spotlight.

‘Why didn’t you _tell_ us you spoke Spanish – fluently?’

Harry chuckled at Louis’ outraged squawk: his boo-bear hated not knowing absolutely _everything._

Niall shrugged. ‘Wasn’t I required to take a modern language at school? Chrisht, d’ y’ _know_ for how many years o’ English Prod oppression how many Irish priests trained at Salamanca, at t’e Irish College? O’ _course_ it was Spanish I learnt.’

* * *

They were not, perhaps, received in Madrid quite as Wellington and his troops had been two centuries prior; but they were certainly _received_. With all mod. cons. and all the trimmings laid on.

Real Madrid is, after all, more than a football club. It has made itself – to an extent not even Man Utd can yet dream of – a global brand, spinning money. It makes movies which it and its players star in; it releases CDs and singles. Its _galácticos_ are made to pay for themselves many times over.

It was inevitable that they should seize upon Mr Horan’s – and Mr Payne’s – party (the polite fiction that they were not casting an eye over The Tommo’s potential was carefully maintained): a celebrity club does not miss a trick in entertaining slebs who may be useful to them.

Real it was who put them up in suites at the Villa Magna; and Real it was who had made reservations for them at Botín, for a dinner that night – and for Casa Lucio the night after.

And it was Real who were responsible when, that evening, they arrived – were wafted – to dinner at Botín (‘bostin’,’ said Liam, with a grin) to find that their hosts from the club were not its executives, but, rather, Cristiano Ronaldo ... and Gareth Bale. (Niall, typically, was hail-fellow-well-met, as one sleb to others, but was clearly more interested in the restaurant’s famed suckling pig – and insisted that Zayn have the roast lamb. At times, it was easy to remember that Dublin and Mide were once Viking-held.)

* * *

That the club had spared CR7 and Gareth Bale for this dinner had left The Tommo, for once in his life, tongue-tied (and the more so as, the day preceding, _Los Blancos_ had lost to Valencia, 2 – 1, which had left Carletto the angriest manager in football, and disinclined until overruled to spare two players for a mere _dinner_ ).

With what might have been tact and might have been actual interest, Cristiano and Gareth, although including Louis in general conversation, left The Tommo to catch up and calm himself during the first few courses: courses in which CR7 and Wales’ Mr Bale plied Liam with questions about the coming Lancashire and Glamorgan seasons in county cricket, and was Freddie making an actual comeback in more than the occasional T20 match, and how was Jimmy Anderson these days. (They also confessed to being Niall Horan fans, and to wishing _they’d_ had schoolmasters of Zayn’s apparent calibre – they admitted that, being a Portuguese and a Welshman, respectively, they had yet to understand quite _all_ the fuss over Cervantes, and perhaps Zayn could explain it sometime –, and that they hoped Harry might consider signing on to take over one of the restaurants at the Bernabéu.)

It was in the course of talking seriously to Liam and Harry about training and diet that they began subtly to draw Louis in, and delicately to question and to advise; and by the time the coffee and the pudding course came ’round – watching Nialler tear into _bartolillos,_ Madrileño cream-puffs, was a sight of awe and wonder –, they were effectively conducting, without seeming to do, both an inquisition and a seminar dedicated to training, nurturing one’s talent, and making oneself _marketable,_ on and off the pitch. (Liam caught Louis’ eye and winked: he expected, that wink seemed to say, a full written précis of the convo by morning.)

* * *

The next day, they were conveyed to Valdebebas, _Ciudad Real Madrid,_ in state. Carletto had, after the loss of 4 January, closed all drills and the entire facility to everyone, no matter that these had previously been authorised to visit and observe: to everyone, including – which had its upside for the lads – the press: everyone, save these five lads. (Zayn slept all the way there: he had spent the better part of the night assuring Liam, who happily accepted the assurance although not in want of it, that Liam was sexier and better looking than Bale and CR7 put together: to which Liam had stoutly responded that that meant he was only _just_ less sexy and desirable than was Zayn....)

Even _their_ time at or near or within sight of the first team pitch itself was limited, although they were made free of all else (Liam resolved, after carefully examining the hydrotherapy centre, that he was installing a resistance wave pool at home, and lobbying Warks to upgrade accordingly at Edgbaston). Louis, for his part, was drilled and drilled hard on the turf pitch with the Reserves of Real Madrid Castilla, and acquitted himself very creditably.

They dined that night at Casa Lucio with Luka Modrić, late of Spurs, and the president of Real, Señor Pérez Rodríguez, who spoke very seriously to Louis about not allowing Leeds United to make a Jonathan Woodgate of him, and how important the preservation of one’s fitness was once achieved.

After they had dined, Señor Pérez put an avuncular arm ’round The Tommo. ‘I shall see you again tomorrow, at Valdebebas. And – who knows? Perhaps in years to come, there, also?’

It was a glorious night; and once back at the hotel, all of them over the moon at their, and specially at Louis’, treatment, they separated only after congratulations and a group hug, for beds suddenly all the sweeter.

A glorious night, that 6 January....

* * *

Fate: Nemesis; Ananke: was always the cruellest and most inexorable of the goddesses.

* * *

They had developed a habit, the lads, as they had turned for home, of listening, when they might – o, the wonders of Wi-Fi and iPlayer –, to Something From Home after breakfasting together and preparing to meet the day’s tasks.

And so they did on 7 January.

 

> … _There are warnings of gales in all areas except Biscay and Trafalgar._

‘Glad I am,’ said Niall, ‘t’ere’s a way o’ crossing t’e Channel in Winter now t’at doesn’t involve sickin’ up on a boat or sittin’ in airports for a delayed flight.’

 

> … _Bailey 942, expected...._

To this there was general assent. They’d had the time of their lives. They had made new friends; seen new places; found new loves. And this last stop on their journey bid fair to be the best, in light of the good it was doing Louis’ prospects.

All the same, they were increasingly eager to go home.

 

> … _Viking, North Utsire: Westerly, 4 or 5, backing Southerly 7 to severe gale 9...._

Zayn leant his head on Liam’s strong, broad shoulder. Home....

 

> _Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea: 5 to 7, increasing 8 to severe gale 9 for a time; fair at first...._

‘God save sailors on a day like this,’ said Haz, quoting his old gran and generations before hers.

 

> … _gale 8 to storm 10, veering...._

‘And cricketers,’ smirked Louis: ‘delicate creatures for whom rain stops play.’ Liam reached lazily over and hit him lightly on the pate with a spoon.

 

> _... St Catherine’s Point Automatic: Northwest by West...._

* * *

They had been two hours at Valdebebas, now on this day allowed to watch the first team without reservation, let, or hindrance, as _Los Blancos_ prepared to avenge their frustrations, come 10 January, upon Espanyol’s Parakeets at the Bernabéu.

It was a few minutes past 11.30, on a crisp morning, 7 January 2015.

There was a sudden flurry of activity upon the touchline. Fernando Hierro and Davide Ancelotti ran to where Carlo Ancelotti stood surveying the pitch with his aggrieved managerial eye; and Carletto staggered visibly as his son and his assistant spoke urgently to him. The Mauris raced onto the pitch and took Varane and Benzema, the French nationals, off, their faces pale; and Carletto waved the other players to him.

As Paul Clement headed purposefully for where the lads were watching in the first team lounge, a profound silence fell over Valdebebas, broken only by the maddened ringing of every phone within earshot.

* * *

‘Ammi, no –’

‘We’re in _Spain,_ Gems, yah? Try to calm Mum down –’

‘Da! Listen – ah, feck, t’at’s t’e label tryin’ t’ ring me –’

‘– _Spain,_ Mum – look, is Dad – hullo? _Roo?_ Is Mum –’

‘I can’t help that, Mum, we’re in Madrid – look, you know not to listen to Lottie –’

‘– I’ve me da and me brother on t’e other line, what d’ y’ _want?_ Jaysus –’

‘– but Baba –’

They were being herded, and passively allowing themselves to be herded, deeper into the building.

‘– and t’at’s t’at, drop me from yer feckin’ _label_ if y’ like, now I’m goin’ back to calming me da and me brother –’

‘– Safaa’s not to worry, okay? We’re a country away from it –’

‘– Dad, get Nic and Roo to calm Mum down, all right? I’ll ring you back, Dougie’s –’

‘No, Baba, but –’

‘Yah, Mum, we’re _fine,_ we’re in Madrid, it’s as far and safe as _you_ are –’

‘– Dougie, now, don’t be a clarnet, I’m in _Spain_ –’

‘Well, God, _I_ don’t know, I can’t very well do anything about Fizz’ dramatics from bloody _Madrid,_ can I?’

‘– daft! Well, you’re the skipper, _you_ make him see sense –’

‘– don’t start, Mum, _please_ … you _know_ how Auntie gets –’

‘– well, light a candle and say t’e Rosary, it’s as much nor _I_ can do from here, Da!’

‘– _Tai,_ it’s not – we’re in _Spain, accha?_ ’

Parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, club captains and coaches....

Liam shouted over the tumult: ‘Everyone ring off! This is important!’ Then he answered the next person who was ringing in.

* * *

‘Robin’ll handle things for a day or so,’ said Sir Alec. ‘I’m off to Sunny Spain.’

* * *

‘Yes, my lord – aye, all right: _“Brigadier”,_ then.’

The others were earwigging quite shamelessly in.

‘And don’t,’ said the Brigadier, ‘pay a blind bit of attention to the bleatin’ of the FCO. I do think it wise that you stop a day or two longer in Madrid – Manley’s a decent chap, and his military attaché’s one of the best, and I make quite certain arrangements can be made. But let’s see how things look tomorrow, shall we? Hold your position until then.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Good lad. Give the others my regards, won’t you – and your Zayn most of all. And do see that they, and you, are all aware that HMG and HM Forces, come to that, are fighting your corner.’

* * *

Real insisted that the lads regard themselves as their guests in Madrid until it was wise to return to Britain through France, or flights to London could be arranged. Niall insisted on underwriting the thing himself, or, rather, having his label do so (if, he clearly felt, the sods were going to panic, they could damned well pay for the privilege whilst he could screw it out of them). The spare, keen-eyed gentleman in mufti who (after a five-hour flight) found them that evening at the Villa Magna, introduced himself (in the accents of Merchiston) as ‘Alec Hamilton Rattray – Robin’s chief’, and politely established his identity as Air Vice-Marshal Sir Alec Hamilton Rattray KCB CBE DSO DFC and Bar, HM Forces’ National Military Representative to NATO and SHAPE. And _his_ contribution to the debate was simply to say that if all else failed, he’d seem them given beds, or at least air mattresses, at the Residence of HM Ambassador to Spain, there in Madrid.

‘You may sleep peaceably in your beds, gentlemen, all the same, wherever those beds may be. I’ll see you again, quite soon. Just now, I have a few other calls upon my time.’

Indeed he did. A four and a half hour flight to Oeiras, just outwith Lisbon, where the seadogs of STRIKFORNATO abide (he wanted speech of RAdm Tim Lowe RN), and thence (ten mortal hours, it was a dog’s life) to Ramstein, where he had an Air Commodore to speak with. There are times when secure comms do not suffice, the written word is inadequate, and there are not enough Queen’s Messengers.

‘Oh – and Mr Malik? Allow no one whatever to look askance at you and yours.’

* * *

They spent much of the night, all of them, after soothing everyone who rang up – and it seemed as if everyone had –, and the next day, and the next, watching the horror mount, bulletin after bulletin from Paris and the Île de France: the shooting in Fontenay-aux-Roses, the manhunt, the siege at Dammartin, the attack and hostage-taking at the Porte de Vincennes Hypercacher shop.

Much: but not all. They ignored the frantic messages from Niall’s agent and management and label. Louis refused to go forward with his plans to begin negotiating for an agent from Activate, for similar reasons. Zayn spoke for an hour or more with his parents, who were wholly supportive whilst being as wholly apprehensive, not least for his prospects. Liam rather told than asked _his_ agent, and Warks, what he intended to do, and should not be deflected from doing. Harry put aside his ambitions of opening his own restaurant, if there should be blow-back. And they attended every vigil and march in Madrid.

Whatever Leeds United and Jay and Dan, and Trisha and Yaser as well, had hoped or feared, Louis and Zayn, with their friends, had – in a way which their parents and Elland Road had never foreseen and could only wish had never been necessary – grown up, fully, all at once.

* * *

Late in the evening of 9 January, after all the shouting and the tumult had, like far too many innocents, died, the captains and the kings – or at least an RAF AVM – returned (from a last stop in Barcelona), and sent a message asking them to meet him in the hotel’s Magnum Bar.

He looked as weary as they felt, but infinitely more indomitable, and quite blatantly Scots. Grim, dour, thrawn – in the sense of his being contrary and stubborn –, and ready to go on until the Last Day o’ Doom.

‘All serene, lads?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘And you’ll be wanting to go home.’

‘Only through Paris, Sir.’

‘Oh, aye, Mr Malik?’

Zayn’s gaze was steady and his nod, solemn.

Then again, the same might be said of them all; and Harry not least. ‘We intend to march. In _la marche républicaine._ ’

‘And that’s final. Sir.’

‘Aye, Mr Tomlinson, I see that. Did you think I’d try to say you nay? It is very much _not_ my business in this world to _discourage_ spirit in young men owing allegiance to Her Majesty: rather the contrary. I’ll not call it the Blitz Spirit in you, nor yet the Dunkirk Spirit: for I hope things are none so bad nor straits so desperate. Not yet. But it’s a fine and proper spirit, and I applaud it.

‘Did you wish to fly, or to go by rail?’

‘Rail, Sir.’

‘Very well. Do you object to my company?’

The suggestion was unexpected enough to knock them back a little where they sat; but not unwelcome, and they said as much.

‘Very well, then. I’ll call for you in the morning, and we’ll go the station together.’

* * *

They were a sombre group of young men who took the train from Madrid on the morning of 10 January. They were blind to the daytime scenery of their retraced steps, back to Valence, each sunk in his own thoughts, and four of them sunk in the embrace of their loves.

A curious group, thought other passengers, equally sombre, to be travelling with an Air Vice-Marshal of the Royal Air Force in fairly full fig, Number 1 Service Dress. Which was, after all, a reassuring sight, reflected the French passengers.....

Nor did the lads, deep in reflection, much attend to the newer scenes they passed, North of Valence. Not to the _Parc naturel régional du Pilat,_ the great massif upon the Westwards of Vienne as they sped towards Lyons; nor to _les Dombes,_ haunted by water-birds; nor the Saône, which they crossed beneath Mâcon, between Grièges and Varennes-lès-Mâcon. The ancientry of Cluny, with its abbey and all that it had meant, called not to them. The Morvan passed them by unseen.

Fate was hurrying them on.

The Seine crossed; Fontainebleau and its sumptuousness behind them, with its memories of _le Roi-Chevalier_ Francis _I_ _er_ and of Bonaparte; Melun spurned as they passed; the Forêt de Sénart run through unheeded....

To Paris, the City of Lights now dimmed.

* * *

There was a reason why Sir Alec had travelled in full fig: and that reason was made evident when they were met at the _Gare._ The security presence was open and obvious, and quite large; the drivers from the Embassy were as unfussed and (frankly) unimpressed as was, clearly, Sir Alec.

They were driven swiftly to 35, rue du Faubourg St Honoré, where Sir Alec – properly uniformed to meet with HM Ambassador, which had been the point – presented them to Sir Peter Ricketts, and took his leave of them. He vanished into the secure bastions of the Embassy and its comms rooms, before he should leave once more for Casteau.

‘Gentlemen. I do hope Mr Horan doesn’t mind coming here: I think he may be the first Irishman to put up for the night since Dufferin was Ambassador – and thus the second to not have been a Wellesley. Ah: I ought perhaps to mention: we thought you might wish to stop at the Residence, the Hôtel de Charost, tonight and tomorrow night before going home.’

‘Am I that much of a problem to our finding rooms?’ Zayn was terse with strain, though perfectly polite.

‘I can’t see why you’d be,’ said Sir Peter; ‘but it is simply impossible to get rooms in Paris just now, unless you wish to find a youth hostel and have Mr Horan and Mr Payne simply _mobbed_ by fans. The marchers are one thing, and of course most of the Heads of Government and what not are more or less simply popping over for the day, but, good Heavens, Fleet Street and its local equivalents have booked every hotel in town since the whole appalling situation began.

‘And after all … how many young men of your age can go home after a trip abroad and say they stopped in a the _hôtel particulier_ which Wellington, as Ambassador, bought of Boney’s sister – Pauline Borghese, you know – eh?’

Liam ran a soothing hand up and down Zayn’s side, and he relaxed.

‘It’s very kind of you, Sir Peter.’

‘Oh, not at all: we must do what we can for Britain’s future. What else, after all – with the greatest respect to athletes and chefs – are schoolmasters, hm?’

* * *

The lads all emailed or messaged their families that they were planning to travel back to London on 12 January. Only Zayn had thought it at all wise to tell his family of their plans for 11 January. (And he quite agreed with Liam that telling Geoff might have been one thing, but telling Karen was simply not on.)

They dined, by invitation, _en famille_ with Sir Peter and Lady Ricketts (to Louis’ panic over ‘forks and that’: in the end quite pointlessly). Suzanne, Lady Ricketts, wore the shoes of an ambassador’s wife lightly and with grace, for all that she – as successor to Lady Diana Cooper and to Mary, Lady Soames, Churchill’s daughter, and indeed to Kitty, duchess of Wellington, and to the marchioness of Dufferin and Ava – had rather large boots to fill. She herself, with the butler (in title, although he was more a very senior manager indeed), showed them ’round the Residence, and gave them, with a perfect lightness of touch, much of its history.

There is nothing quite like an English gentlewoman, implacably gardening, resolutely pouring out the Darjeeling, indefatigably having people to dinner, to make even the worst of tragedies bearable.

* * *

The talents of the Residence staff, brigaded and rounded out by that of the Embassy, were inexhaustibly multifarious. As they must be.

Without wanting to consult the lads, volunteers appeared the next morning to paint four faces with the Union flag on the right cheek, as for a World Cup, and one with the Irish tricolour. And, having consulted the lads the night previous, they brought a banner and two placards, to order.

And then slipped them into the tail of the very secure procession which was led by the PM and the Leader of the Opposition, as they went out the door after paying their call upon HM Ambassador.

* * *

The lads, being unofficial and wishing to remain so, found themselves, then, in the crush at the _Place de la République,_ and well to the front, amidst perhaps two million marchers beneath a grey and frigid sky. ( _… Gales in all areas except Biscay, Trafalgar, and Fitzroy … 959, losing their identities … Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty: West or Northwest...._ )

And they marched, uncaring of consequence. Liam – always a good man in a scrum – and Louis – always a better, being more willing to get stuck in to hurting someone who was in want of it – on the outside, and Niall in the middle, holding waist-high the long banner:

_La Liberté , L’Unité, et La Laïcité_

with Zayn next Liam and Haz next The Tommo, holding the placards high. Zayn’s read, _Nous sommes les Juifs_ and _Nous sommes les flics,_ and Harry’s, _Nous sommes Ahmed_ and _Nous sommes tous_ Charlie.

As they marched, Zayn had the inconsequent thought that Niall, when (as rarely) he was _not_ smiling, looked very, very stubborn, and _extremely_ dangerous. Which was of course quite true.

Of _course_ they were caught by cameras.

 

* * *

The storms roiled on, on Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr (it was quite extraordinary, thought Liam, who had not bothered much with social media whilst they’d been on their journey, how _many_ – and how enthusiastic, not to say, explicit: Niall had been more prophetic than he’d known – ‘Ziam’ Tumblrs and other sites there now were. They were trending on Twitter, which made him feel he ought to say something: it wasn’t about _them,_ damn it all, and it wasn’t _trendy:_ but Zayn managed to talk him out of _that_.

The ECB and Warwickshire were staunchly supportive of ‘the rights of any cricketer, and particularly outside the Season and without seeming to imply any endorsement by the ECB or his Club, to participate, personally, in a rally, political or otherwise, which was also attended by the Prime Minister and by the Leader of HM Loyal Opposition’: which was more than the ICC, which, having burnt its fingers over Moeen Ali in the past, had retreated into ‘no comment’ mode, could manage to do. Liam’s team-mate Ateeq Javid led the charge of fellow players coming to his defence when Liam was smeared as a ‘racist’ for attending the rally – and Zayn, inevitably mentioned in conjunction, was called an apostate, _murtadd;_ Nasser Hussain and Sadiq Mohammad led the charge of retired players and commentators coming to Zayn’s and Liam’s defence – to which Javed Miandad soon added his weight, hitting the critics for another ‘Miandad’s six’. (Yaser didn’t quite know, back in Bradford, whether to rejoice or weep.)

Zayn was, naturally, concerned on Liam’s behalf – particularly when his sexuality was dragged into it as well, and he was accused of ‘debauching’ and ‘seducing’ Zayn (by that point, Moeen Ali himself, Yorkshire CCC’s Bradford-born bowler Moin Ashraf, and Surrey’s (and Cambridge’s) golden-boy all-rounder Zafar Ansari, all had entered the lists alongside Daggers, Aggers, Blowers, Boycs, Tuffers, Vaughnie, and Swanny, to defend Liam and Zayn and insist that cricket have no truck with this sort of thing).

He was rather more concerned with the death threats they were both receiving: which were few, and of which few of that few were, likely, serious (or at least attainable), but were alarming all the same. As he was not yet a qualified teacher, there was no union or professional body to weigh in as regarded him, but he had a suspicion he’d put up a black with the right-on, sandalled, muesli-munching _Grauniadistas_ of the NUT.

They’d certainly infuriated plenty of Internet SJWs....

As had Harry, of course; although the threats to ‘boycott his restaurant’ rang rather hollow, as he hadn’t one – yet – and his actual job just then, so far as he had one, was as catering chef to Mr Niall Horan’s production company, and personal chef to The Talent (Mr Horan) when on tour.

In much the same way, no one in football yet had cause to comment on Louis as a signed player, because he wasn’t – yet. He and Harry were also getting a few death threats on social media, but did not take them more seriously than they warranted: particularly when some friends they had made abroad – Karim Benzama and Mehdi Benatia as much as Tevez and Bale, CR7 and Djibril Sidibé and Luka and Luke and Colin and Uncle Tom Cobley and all – spoke in support. (Gareth Bale took the same line as Warks and the ECB, that it was a hell of a thing if two Britons couldn’t attend the same rally as the PM _and_ Ed Miliband.) Olympique de Marseilles and SS Lazio, clubs which had proclaimed ‘ _Je suis_ Charlie’ after the attacks, both name-checked Louis on social media and their websites, as well.

Which left Niall, who was cynically amused (Ed Sheeran, in solidarity with Niall, was, instead, vocally furious) by his management’s and his label’s swift passage through politic waffling, refusal to comment, private threats of what they’d do if he commented further, and – once the Golden Globe Awards, the first entertainment gala after the shootings and the marches, had adopted the ‘ _Je suis_ Charlie’ theme – sudden, full-throated public support of Their Brave Lad, Niall Horan. That _he_ was being threatened, he did not allow to worry him. (That his _friends_ were being threatened left him calmly and silently plotting how to kill anyone who tried it on, before they could do His Lads the least harm.) That there were threats of a boycott amused him: he mostly wrote for others, and very few people buying, say, the latest Kodaline or McBusted CD went out and looked up the songwriters’ names first; nor, felt Niall, were many fans of what he wrote or what he sang also radical Islamists to begin with. As for the incidents in which his studio CDs were burnt by angry mobs in a few dusty and remote places, Niall’s reaction was glee. Not only was it excellent publicity for his own fan-base … it surely meant the poor bastards’d had t’ go out and _buy_ t’e CDs for starters, and pity it was he hadn’t the petrol and matches concessions in t’e same area....

All the same, there were threats enough – and enough of those, credible – that the lads were grateful and obliged for the foresight and percipience of Brigadier the earl of Maynooth, AVM Sir Alec Hamilton Rattray, and Sir Peter and Lady Ricketts.

* * *

They left Paris the next day, 12 January, in chill and dispiriting weather. The security presence on the Eurostar was tight, and reassuringly visible.

They had sprinted through the _Parc naturel régional Oise – Pays de France:_ Chantilly and its forest, and, a few miles away to the North and East, Compiègne, freighted with its double weight of history.

It was as they passed Tartigny, there on the road between Breteuil and Montdidier, into a region where every crossroad has its memory of sacrifice and poppied loss, and English and Irish soldiers’ dust sleeps (from the Battle of Cressy to the Battle of the Somme, it has been a land watered with blood), that Liam, glancing towards the back of the carriage, spotted a gingery gentleman of military bearing, in tweeds, who winked.

As they passed through Amiens, the gentleman in question finally acceded to Liam’s silent, gestured pleas (Zayn was asleep), and came forward to have a quiet word. Liam gently stroked Zayn’s flushed cheek (he was, thought Liam dotingly, so _adorable_ when he slept. And when he didn’t) to wake him, and lightly kicked Niall in the shins, which caused him to wake and startle Louis and Hazza into wakefulness.

‘Wh- – Brigadier!’

‘Tomlinson. Horan; Styles. Enjoy your kip, Malik? Excellent. I shan’t keep you.’

‘I’m the one waved you up.’

‘So you were, Payne.’

‘We want to thank you.’

‘Oh, wholly unnecessary, but you are of course quite welcome.’

‘I feel,’ said Zayn, ‘there ought to be something we can do to show –’

‘There is. Go out into the world and make a difference: by being who you are, and the best of yourselves.’

The Tommo raised an eyebrow.

‘Ah,’ smiled the Brigadier. ‘That Yorkshire scepticism. I suppose you think this is the point where I tell you to report to the FCO or Six or some damned lot to be debriefed on what you may have seen on your travels – “if you see something, say something”, and all that rot –, or set up as a potential talent-spotter as a schoolmaster, and offer places to chaps under Non-Official Cover on musical tours or some damned thing. Sod that for a game of … Int Corps. Cousin of mine was actually _in_ the Green Slime, you know, but with a few honourable exceptions … no.

‘Well, if that’s what you were thinking, don’t. I’ve no interest, and never have done, in anything save looking after five lads who’ve the potential to do a fairish amount of good in the world – and the obligation of an MCC member to a future England captain, or I miss my guess. It’s hardly something which merits thanks, let alone some form of recompense.’

 

* * *

Abbeville, Boulogne and the Opal Coast and the chop of the Channel through the windows, Sangatte, the Tunnel; Kent at last (so must, thought Zayn, have the troops saved from Dunkirk felt), Folkestone and Ashford, the Downs; Greenhithe and Dartford, Woolwich (‘fucking _Arsenal,_ ’ muttered Louis, in ritual commination; ‘fucking, _fucking_ Gooners’); the Thames crossed, the sprawl of London all about them now: home at last.

* * *

Niall, cannily, had tweeted that he was flying back to Dublin from Paris, and, he hoped, with his friends with him. In consequence, there were no screaming fans nor yet any paps at St Pancras.

They were met, unexpectedly, by a crush all the same: an extended family of Maliks; Anne and Gemma; Jay, Dan, and the whole brood; and Karen (in tears already), Geoff, Nicola, _and_ Ruth (‘what d’ you _mean,_ you left _Andy_ to watch Loki and me house, Mum, I’ll get home and Loki’ll be overdosed on treats and all me whisky’ll be gone!’). The hugging was general and all-in.

In the midst of the embraces and exclamations, Yaser noted a foxy-whiskered gentleman in tweeds being saluted by a Guards subaltern – the Irish Guards, if he were reading the tactical recognition flash aright.

‘Hm. Wonder who that is.’

Zayn laughed, only a little brokenly. ‘In the tweeds? Brigadier Lord Maynooth, Baba: I’ll tell you the story. Someday.’

Yaser raised an eyebrow, but returned to his theme: all the dishes his mother and his aunts had prepared to celebrate his return (they were all, it seemed, going on to Liam’s before they broke up, and eating there). Zayn loved his mum’s cooking, but his heart sank all the same. With so little lamb and so little decent beef on the Continent – and so much _pig_ – he’d had his fill of _poule au riz, poulet au fromage, waterzooi,_ _Brathähnchen, Backhendl, pollo alla cacciatora, escabeche de pollo...._

Although no one had expected to see Niall Horan at St Pancras, the Beeb, ITV News, and Sky had all had skeleton crews on hand, so as to get reactions from members of the Great British Public returning from Paris after recent events. When they spotted him, and then twigged to who his companions were, the frenzy began.

‘Nialler! Nialler!’

‘Liam!’

‘Mr Payne!’

The press were, as commonly, vindicating the Edwardian character of them summarised in the old chestnut, ‘four members of the Press, and a gentleman from _The Times_ ’ – although in a Murdochian age, that latter distinction tended to belong, amongst print journos, rather to reporters from the _Torygraph._

‘Niall, have you –’

‘Is that Zayn Malik?’

‘Liam, what do you say to –’

‘Are you Louis Tomlinson?’

Harry sniggered, quietly, as Louis couldn’t decide whether to curse the press, or preen. _No one_ recognised chefs. Well, maybe if someone had sent Giles Coren along....

‘Niall, in light of recent events, who are you voting for in the General Election?’

Niall hit that one for a positively Liamic six. ‘In light o’ t’e support I’ve had from the Taoiseach, I’m changing from Fianna Fáil t’ Fine Gael.’

‘Mr Malik, have you seen or heard what the mayor of Rotterdam said? And that he mentioned you as a positive example?’

The Dutch-Moroccan, Muslim mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, had said, in fact, that any fellow Muslim who ‘didn’t like this freedom, for heaven’s sake, get your suitcase and leave’, and that ‘if you don’t like it here because you don’t like the humorists who make a little newspaper, just – if I may dare say so – fuck off’.

Zayn was tempted to say the same to the press. As it happened, it was unnecessary that he do: the Transport Police (was that a ginger gentleman in tweeds in the middle distance having a word with their Superintendent commanding?) were descending upon the scrum – though Zayn wasn’t certain the ‘r’ had any place in ‘scrum’ just now.

‘We’re journalists,’ said an aggrieved member of that august body.

‘And you’re blocking the platform, sunshine,’ said a sergeant, implacably. ‘And _don’t_ put the families in frame, and especially not the minor children.’

‘But –’

The sergeant said one word. ‘Levenson.’

It sufficed.

* * *

* * *

_Gap years,_ thought the Headmaster. _Dangerous things...._

It was, thought he, precisely as Bilbo had said. Step out onto the path at your very door, and the road can lead you ever on: to Mirkwood and the Lonely Mountain, to Mordor, to worse places yet.... And yet the road goes ever on, and one has it to walk, and must walk it – around and back to home.

Certainly they’d all been back to the Continent since, in their couples (even Niall had eventually been snared: by a lass from home, oddly enough, or perhaps not oddly) and as ‘the lads’; and they’d been further afield than that. (The year when, with Zayn on a sabbatical and Louis out for two months with an injury, they’d joined the Barmy Army for an Ashes tour down under to cheer Liam on, had been memorable indeed.) But the road led always home; and the five of them had remained a happy few, a band of brothers; and gentlemen in England then a-bed could think themselves accursed they were not there, and hold their manhoods cheap....

Gap years, trips, tours: the road went ever on, and the years like leaves on an Autumn wind....

There’d been so much. Niall’s triumphant, genre-shattering CD of later that year, 2015’s Christmas must-have _Grand Tour,_ and the singles: ‘Cook’s Tour’ (Harry had been delighted beyond measure), ‘Changes of Pitch’ (which had become Louis’ signature motif), ‘The Rocky Road to Paris’, ‘Way of Negation’; and of course ‘Voyage to Manhood’, which the Headmaster’s father could not listen to without weeping; and the single which of all of them had been the first to go platinum, co-written and co-performed with Thomas Walsh of Pugwash and Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy, in their capacity as The Duckworth Lewis Method, with Aggers providing spoken lines, ‘Somewhere Over the Pavilion’, with its refrain of ‘no Payne, no gain’ and ‘Payne is weakness leaving the body’....

Niall had never looked back, and to this day, turn and turn about with Ed, had the world at his feet, and deservedly. The French loved him – he’d been granted, as a foreign national, ‘the distinction’ – as actual membership was restricted to French nationals – of the Légion d’Honneur in the rank of _Officier;_ the entire city of Melbourne, and most of Oz, had attempted officially to adopt him; the Yanks were mad for him; the Holy Father had made him a Knight Commander of the Order of S Sylvester for his 2021 Mass setting . Yet the year of _Grand Tour,_ as a concept album, had been the first and greatest of his _anni mirabiles,_ in which he had swept the Ivors and the Brits and the NME Album of the Year (which choice had caused a positive shit-storm), and the Choice Music Prize in Ireland. He had an honorary K now, and the Queen’s Medal for Music; and the Order of Clans of Ireland, and the Freedom of Mullingar, and was a member of Aosdána; yet he was yet Niall, unchanged and unchanging – save for the better – as the years rolled by: smile and enthusiasm undimmed, invention and inspiration never staled, love as all-enfolding as ever. And it had all been set off by that year of change, which had put a rocket under all of them alike.

It had not been a smooth ride. There had been years of … well: gales in all areas, and storms aplenty (though never at home, in Wombourne); and the storm in the West had finally blown down and surged over and swept away the worst of those who had bayed for his blood as for the blood of the staff of _Charlie Hebdo_ and of Jews in a kosher shop, in Paris long ago. There had been very difficult times for Liam – and for the Headmaster: not as between them, of course, but for just those reasons Liam had long ago forecast. (Cricket had stood by him, all the same, even unto revoking Pakistan’s Test status for several years until the PCB, the Pakistan Cricket Board, reined in its supporters and put its own house in order. And it gave Liam and Broady, as it had given Liam and Chris Broad, Stuart’s father, something to talk about: Liam and Chris Broad had shared the almost unique experience, in cricket, of being the intended targets in a terror attack, which had then, and even now in memory, roused every Malik living, and Zayn not least, to towering heights of fury. There is no righteous anger quite like that of a man who sees his family threatened and his faith and heritage betrayed by a small group of savage fanatics engaged in perverting and bringing disgrace upon that very faith, in the claimed name and interest of that faith.)

Harry’s cookbooks had twice won the Jane Grigson award. He’d been the Beeb’s Cook of the year and Food Personality of the Year; had won its Derek Cooper Lifetime Achievement Award already; and was now one of the judging panel of that same BBC Food and Farming Awards programme. His involvement in FE and culinary education had been recognised, just last year, by the award of the Albert Medal. The French had never forgotten the lads, and 11 January 2015; and Hazza was after all a chef. Naturally he had been awarded the distinction of the Légion d’Honneur in the rank of, by now, _Commandeur;_ he was also, advocate of French produce as he was, a _Commandeur_ of the _Ordre du Mérite Agricole,_ and an _Officier,_ for his cookbooks, of the _Ordre des Arts et des Lettres._ His restaurant, _styles,_ just as he had imagined it, ‘a n old coaching inn, all the food locally sourced, and local dishes, real English food; real ales, too’, in Castleton, in the Peak District hard by Peveril Castle, to which people fought their way in – and in winter through – drifts and droves, held every award the culinary world could give, and every star Michelin could bestow. Its attached organic farm held a Royal Warrant. He had revolutionised catering at sport venues, too, and sport nutrition as well, building on what he had seen and learnt in that fateful ‘gap year’ of barely a month and a half. He was widely tipped for a K in the next Honours List (he was already CBE); he had succeeded such luminaries as Nigel Slater and the Hairy Bikers as Britain’s favourite telly chef; he had made the GBBO his own. And through it all, he had remained the same Haz: cheeky and charming, all curls and dimples, rock-star outfits and mad headbands, bedroom eyes and bedroom voice; mad for bananas and bananas over Louis ( _mad about the boy, simply mad about the boy...)._ His hair was as wild as ever (the man-bun was, thankfully, a thing of the past, rarely mentioned), although it was beginning to have a grey thread or two in it (Louis said that if Haz ever went fully grey, he could go on stage as a Brian May tribute act); he remained incapable of buttoning a shirt; it was even now a wonder just how he got into his trousers, and did he _paint_ them on, honestly, Hazza.... (Louis always insisted he’d once asked Haz how a man could get into those trousers, and got the winking answer that he could begin by buying Harry a drink, which, as the lads knew, hadn’t been the way of it at all.)

And The Tommo was even now as mad for Haz. His had not been an easy road. He had single-handedly carried Leeds United into a second FA Cup and into the Premier League, and turned it into a money-spinner, a franchise and a marketing powerhouse, after the manner of Man U and Real. He had single-handedly carried football, and its attitudes, and even the attitudes of the terraces, into the Twenty-First Century, uphill and being fought at every step. He had won the BBC SPOTY Award several times (although, to his mock displeasure, not as often as Some People), was made CBE, and had been the first Englishman, playing as he insisted on always playing for an English side (he liked to quote the – oddly Scots – proverb, _East, West, Hame’s best_ ), to win the _Ballon d’Or._ Thrice.

He had been capped for England too many times to credit, and captained it to three European and two World Cups. (He had also taken apart enough French players and sides on the pitch that he, like Liam, had never received a French order – although Liam, having mentored a good number of Netherlands cricketers, was nowadays a _Ridder in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau_.)

And Louis had done it all through trials and tribulations which, reflected the Headmaster, should have broken the Headmaster: scurrilous accusations, personal attacks, the sad loss to him and Harry of a daughter at the age of nine....

But he was The Tommo, indomitable. He had gone on to manage Leeds United, and England, making the training and development tips he’d picked up abroad the minimum acceptable standard in English football, and gone on to repeat his successes of his playing days, managing Leeds Utd and England alike to yet more silverware – and himself to a well-merited record as Premier League Manager of the Month (many times over) and Year (three times), and a yet more well-deserved dubbing as Knight Bachelor, to go with his CBE: only the tenth manager or player to get a K. And yet, age had not withered, nor indeed had custom staled, his infinite Tommosity. His smile was still as full of sparking mischief; his fringe even now got in his eyes; his tongue was as sharp as ever; and he had, despite Haz’ cooking and for Haz’ delectation, kept as fit. They had raised an admirable family even through tragedy; they were a model of exemplary devotion; he’d done what he’d set out to do, both by his mum and siblings and by Harry (and by himself and his sport).

And _still_ he whinged, (mostly) humorously, that he was forever overshadowed by Liam.

One could, if so minded, track Payne LJ through his life and career simply by looking out his awards: _Wisden_ Cricketer of the Year time and again; _Wisden_ Leading Cricketer in the World; ICC Cricketer of the Year several times over, ICC Test Player of the Year times without number, the ICC World Test XI nominations, the Spirit of Cricket Award; Sports Personality of the Year several times over (and once more than Louis); the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy; two Compton-Miller Medals; two Walter Lawrence Trophies; the honours board at Lord’s....

Or you could consider his statistics. Or how he’d captained Warks. Or how he’d captained England’s Test side to win back and retain The Ashes, years running.

Or you could simply note his place in the public’s affections – not least when he was on TMS. The first Ashes of his captaincy had secured that, and secured his second SPOTY with it. After the first day, England were on the ropes, largely because nothing had gone _over_ the rope (Liam, in one of his rare moments of nervous distraction, owing to having had suddenly to captain as well as to bat, had been out lbw, and cheaply – for him – on 58). Ambushed by the press, he’d said, simply, ‘Most of us played like doughnuts that innings, and me worst of all’; but his tone suggested that that anomaly was going to be corrected, or he’d die trying.

Australia had enforced the follow-on the next morning, expecting that a youngish team with a callow skipper should be easy meat.

By the time he’d declared, with three wickets yet in hand, England stood at 648 – 7 for the innings, 776 for the match, and Liam himself was on 361 not out, just shy of Garry Sobers’ innings record, and Len Hutton’s 364 at the Oval in ’38; and ‘Liam’s Doughnuts’ were taken to the hearts of all England, and went on to win the match and whitewash the thoroughly daunted and demoralised Baggy Greens.

It had been the start of an amazing run, recognised by his K and his CBE (and the proffered life peerage he had so far refused, although sooner or later there _must,_ surely, be a Baron Payne, of Edgbaston in the County of Warwickshire and of St John’s Wood in the City of London): an amazing run, yet one recognised still more by the place he had yet in the hearts of his countrymen and all of cricket. Phil Mustard had been ‘the Colonel’, and the commentator Don Mosey, ‘the Alderman’; Bradman had been ‘the Don’ and WG Grace, ‘the Doctor’; Jack Hobbs, ‘the Master’ (did cricket, wondered the Headmaster, actually explain _Dr Who,_ perhaps?) and Sachin Tendulkar, ‘the Little Master’; there’d been, the Headmaster vaguely recalled, a cricketer who’d been nicknamed ‘the Professor’ as well, although he could not recall who (shocking lapse, really, and best not to tell Liam).... It had been inevitable, for all Liam’s unacademic persona, that ‘Big Payno’, as he grew in non-physical stature, had become first ‘the Warden’ and at last ‘the Chancellor’ (and indeed he was, nowadays: Chancellor of the University of Warwick, and not disposed to be the supine figurehead which that position implied, although of course he left actual academic administration to the Vice-Chancellor, as was only proper).

And _he_ hadn’t changed a whit. Still as gorgeous and fit as ever; and as sweet. Of _course_ he was the best-loved man in Britain.

And for himself? That also had not, reflected the Headmaster, been always easy; but it had always been worthwhile. There had been the hard graft of learning his profession in a real classroom setting, for which books and theory had been sometimes less than no preparation. There had been the long slog of his MLitt and PhD in English, from Birmingham. There had been the mingled joy and exasperation of fatherhood of his own – and the period, when the children were home (he had missed them when they went off to school, but it had had its compensations), when things had been a little more bland in the bedroom than he’d become used to. (One couldn’t really very well call one’s lover, ‘Daddy’, in the throes of passion, with children in the house to whom that spouse _was_ ‘Daddy’ just as the Headmaster was ‘Baba’, after all.) There had been – once Liam had been capped for England and subject to the exigencies of a Central Contract (the Headmaster felt this deserved Initial All Caps) which ill-accorded with academic terms – periods of painful separation: though only physical separation, ever. There had been at last and of late the challenge of setting up and heading up Hinksford School, where so many of the pupils were on full bursaries and others on part-bursaries: because, of course, not a few of these had been rescued, as it were, from sink schools which were killing their prospects and wasting their wits, and had therefore wanted some rapid remedial tuition, and no blame to them.

And yet, it had been worth it, all of it; and yet, they’d made it through, all of them. He’d met so many people he’d never imagined meeting (and none of them the sort he’d met, surreptitiously, at the Sun Hotel or Candy or Uber as a young gay lad in Bradford): Freddie, of course, and Saeed Bhai, and the Ansari brothers, and Boom Boom; and great figures as well from football and music and cuisine.... There’d been the scholarly articles and the books, as well: hard graft, those, but worth it, and the French – who had not forgotten 2015 – had seized on them to excuse their making him a _Chevalier_ of the _Ordre des Arts et des Lettres_ and a _Commandeur_ of the _Ordre des Palmes Académiques._ (It had taken a democratising revolution, a sea-change in attitudes, and a deal of time, but the reformed Pakistan, too, had – eventually, and in the end – honoured the Headmaster, for services to the Pakistani diaspora, with the _Sitara-i-Imtiaz:_ not without controversy, to be sure, even now.)

They’d all grown up (he smoked very little now, having done a bit of backsliding in the last sprint to his PhD, but it was a pipe, nowadays; spliff was certainly a thing of the distant past, and fags as well); but they’d grown up, he thought, rather well. As the Brigadier, now dead, had enjoined upon them. (It was not an accident that the current earl of Maynooth headed the school’s Board of Governors.)

The Headmaster might have some distinguished frosting, now, at his temples, and changes of fashion had left him less The Cool Teacher than a relic (the History Mistress – wife of the Science Master, a splendid young chemist ( _Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München_ and Cambridge) of German-Turkish extraction, who’d grown up in a Munich orphanage – taught, every year, to a new-risen form, one class on just that, noting how fashion came in waves, and the Headmaster’s tattoos, like those prevalent in the upper classes just after Carter and Carnarvon had opened the tomb of Tutankhamen – Winston’s mother, Lady Randolph, had had one –, came in and out of vogue). But he could even now wear the clothes he’d worn in Lille and Monstein; he was as lean and taut; and, when it was only him and Liam and love and lust and joyful laughter, he _still_ looked damned good in a pair of brief, filmy, silky, lacy, transpicuous knickers. And nothing else; and, Liam having changed very little with the years, not for long.

Liam _had_ captained England. He himself, thought the Headmaster, had at least a K, if not – yet – a life peerage, for Services to Education. His father-in-law, frailer now yet as sharp as ever, yet chuckled at the thought of a blue plaque in a petrol-station’s forecourt; but it was, really, deserved....

But the Upper _and_ Lower Schools, in all their tribes, were waiting for an answer.

‘Oh, yes,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Dangerous things, gap years. You might very easily find best friends in the process – and be lumbered with them for _years._ ’ Louis did not quite dare to raise two fingers at him, but he _did_ put his tongue out. ‘You might find your vocation; or create an award-winning CD.’

Niall crowed with laughter.

‘You might even,’ smiled the Headmaster, ‘find your future spouse, and fall in – or fall back into – love.’

Liam grinned, and, gently pushing his way between a few pupils, took the Headmaster by both hands.

‘You always were an eloquent lad: even then, Dr Malik,’ said he, and kissed him thoroughly.

* * *

**HINKSFORD SCHOOL**  
_Hinksford, South Staffs  
_ HMC IAPS

Sir Zayn Malik KBE BA (Leeds) MA (Leeds) MLitt (Birm) PhD (Birm) FRSL, Headmaster  
The Rt Hon. the earl of Maynooth, Chairman, Board of Governors  
…  
Niall Horan KBE KSS Queen’s Medal for Music BA (Mus) (Dub) MPhil (Mus) (Dub)  
Adjunct Master in Music

Harry Styles CBE BA (Institut Paul Bocuse / IAE Lyon ( _Université Jean Moulin Lyon III_ )) MSc (Institut Paul Bocuse / EMLYON)  
Adjunct Master in Food Technology and Business Studies

Sir Liam Payne Kt CBE DL  
Master in Charge of Cricket

Sir Louis Tomlinson Kt CBE BA (Hons) (the Open University)  
Adjunct Master (Games); Adjunct Master in Business and Commercial Studies  


__**Patet Omnibus Veritas;** _ _ _**  
** _ __**Strenuis Ardua Cedunt** _ _

* * *

THE END OF THE ROAD … OR ITS BEGINNING

* * *

* * *

 

 


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